Governorate architect Edward Krzysztof Piotr Charmanski (1836-1910) became the founder of one of two dynasties of Polish architects in 19th-century Ekaterinoslav, whose sons, Zdzislaw and Stanislaw, became well-known architects. He was also the author of several famous buildings in the neo-Gothic style both in the city and in the governorate. Unfortunately, in modern times, the Charmanski family has been forgotten and is only remembered by professional historians of Dnipro, despite the fact that father Edward Christopher Peter and son Stanislav Antoni Charmanski belonged to the architectural elite of the city of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries and left a strong mark on its history.

***

The future founder of the dynasty of Polish architects in Left Bank Ukraine, Edward Krzysztof Piotr Charmański, was born on 22 February 1836 into the family of a hereditary nobleman, land judge Józef Leopold Biberstein Charmański (28 February 1810 - 2 October 1872) and his wife Justyna, née Dowmont-Siesiecki (1807-1879). He was baptised on 22 March 1836 in the Kurkle Roman Catholic parish church in the town of Kurkle in the Wilkomierski district of the then Grodno governorate. Their family nest was the village of Medziočiai (Oniksztyniansky district, Lithuania), which had belonged to the Charmansky nobility since the 19th century. The couple had seven children, two daughters and five sons: Teofilia Barbara (5 March 1830 - ?), Romuald Julian Bonifacy Wincenty (5 June 1832 - ?), Julian Antoni Jan (25 June 1833 - after 1913), Henryk Edward (27 November 1834 - 1892), Edward Krzysztof Piotr (22 February 1836 - 1910), Odalia Apolonia Antonina (20 February 1839 - ?), Ludwik (18 December 1842 - 2 December 1913).

The Charmanski family was ancient and had the Rogala coat of arms, the owners of which had been known since the middle of the 14th century. The Polish genealogist and heraldicist Kasper Niesiecki (1682-1744) included the following information on the pages of his best-known 5463-page edition of 1839-1845 "Herbarz polskiego...": "Charmański of Rogala coat of arms: according to Kojałowicz in MS. of Bibersztein coat of arms, when this author adds that from the crown in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania they settled. Daniel Charmański, Kazimierz Cześnik Trocki, his son Antoni, and brother Michał, both experienced in various expeditions with hetman Michał Pace. Kazimierz, the deputy of Trocki, and Felicyan, of Trock voivodeship, signed the election of Jan III". This means that Edward Krzysztof Piotr Charmański undoubtedly had ancestors from the Middle Ages. It is interesting that his granddaughter Zofia (1914-2001), daughter of his eldest son Zdzisław, who got her name after her grandmother, in her memoirs preserved in the collection of the Manuscript Cabinet of the University of Warsaw Library noted: "I have family ties to the Northern Borderlands by an exceedingly distant tradition dating back to the Gediminas in Lithuania".

The brothers Ludwik and Julian were educated at the Institute of Nobility in Vilnius. Edward, on the other hand, went to study in the northern capital of the Russian Empire, St Petersburg, to become an architect.

Between 1852 and 1858, he studied at the Building School in St Petersburg, receiving a technical education. After graduating from it, he was assigned to serve with the Yekaterinoslav Gubernial Road and Building Commission as an assistant architect. He and his young wife Sophia (1834-1910) moved to Ekaterinoslav. They had three sons. Marian Joseph Zdzislaw (1859-1825) and Stanislaw Antoni (1861-?), like their father, became architects. Zdzislaw graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1885 with a diploma of "civil engineer with the right to conduct civil and construction work", and Stanislav also graduated from this university with high marks - in 1887. Both gained recognition as talented architects in Kharkiv and in their native Ekaterinoslav. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that after the occupation of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks, Zdzislaw Charmanski left for Poland and in 1924 was appointed the first Director of the State Technical School in Vilnius.

The professional activities of the youngest son Anatoly were not related to architecture. From the scanty information, it appears that in the first decade of the 20th century he worked in the town of Bachmut, and in 1915 the titular councillor Anatoly Charmanski occupied the position of investigator in the 4th district of the Yekaterinoslav district and at the same time worked at the men's gymnasium in Kamensky. At the last minute, the author found information that Anatoly Kharmansky emigrated from Bolshevik-occupied Ukraine. In 1930 he was granted citizenship of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and, living in the city of Prijedor since 1932, worked in a branch of the district forestry committee.

There is an interesting fact relating to Zdzislaw's place of birth. In the certificate of granting Polish citizenship dated 29 September 1922, which Zdzisław Charmański submitted to the Warsaw starost, he indicated Vilnius as his place of birth. It can be assumed that the young couple, Edward and Zofia Charmański, after he had completed his studies, left St Petersburg for relatives living in Vilnius, where their eldest son was born. In addition, they had already arrived permanently in Yekaterinoslav with their infant son.

Edward Kharmansky made a good living for his family in this city, having built his own house (no. 11) on the corner of Potiomkinskaya (now - Sergei Yefremov) and Krutohirna Streets. It can even be assumed, according to landscape expert Valentin Starostin, that he made his own design for the single-storey building, which he planned as a new family nest. This building was demolished in 1998.

Edward Charmanski started his professional career at a low ebb. Official government information from the yearbook "Memorial book and address calendar of Yekaterinoslav gubernia" in 1864 states "assistant architect Eduard Osipovich Charmanskiy", in 1867 and 1875 - "junior engineer, architect", in 1889. - "gubernial architect, state councillor". He probably took up this post in 1876 after the resignation of Albert Brodnicki. Unfortunately, it does not seem possible to establish the exact date of his assumption of this post, as well as the year of his termination of work, as the yearbooks of the Yekaterinoslav gubernia, unlike, for example, the yearbooks of the Kharkiv gubernia, were published irregularly and it is very difficult to trace his professional career. Approximately, the beginning of the 1890s can be given as the date of the end of his work in this position, as Pavel Avdev was already the provincial architect in 1894.

Almost no information has survived about Edward Charmanski's initial period of professional activity between 1858 and 1865. It seems that his work at that time - as Valentin Starostin noted - was limited to designing and supervising state commissions of the time for small repairs of public buildings. No news of private commissions for construction projects has been preserved either.

In 1865, the administration of construction matters in the Russian Empire was reformed: the gubernial road and construction commissions were abolished, while construction divisions were created in the structure of the gubernial boards. Following this reform, he became a member of the Building Branch of the Yekaterinoslav Gubernial Board. As far as can be inferred, Edward Charmanski's work in his previous position was evaluated positively and in the same year he was appointed junior engineer of the Yekaterinoslav Gubernial Board, and soon took up the post of junior architect, which he held until the retirement of the gubernial architect Albert Brodnicki in 1875. In fact, Charmanski was Brodnitsky's deputy at the time.

In his position as gubernial architect, Edward Charmanski had extensive powers: laying out facade plans, drawings and cost estimates for all government constructions, reconstructions, repairs to public buildings, and supervising construction sites.

The most important achievement of the architect of that time was the District Territory Building in Verkhniedneprovsk (now 56 Dniprovska Street) in Yekaterinoslav Governorate. The project was completed by the architect in 1871, and in turn in 1874. - construction was completed. The planning scheme for the edifice was based on the wishes of the district assembly of the landed gentry. The architectural solution, on the other hand, was entirely the work of the designer himself. The use of the neo-Gothic style in a public building was rather strange, but the county assembly liked it and the representatives of the local government accepted this architectural solution.

The neo-Gothic style design was approved by the landsmanship on the 'first reading', meaning - without any comments to the architect. However, on closer inspection, the building's 'Gothicness' is quite remarkable. For all its opulence, its design is too geometric and 'rectilinear', entirely dependent on the size and shape of the bricks. The five-storey building in "Г"-like (Ukrainian letter) form was built of red burnt brick. It can be said that a maximally rationalised Gothic style was used in the design of the earthworks building. The building, erected on the initiative of the local nobility marshal Sergey Lappo-Danilevsky, became the centre of the land assembly of the Verkhneidneprovsky district. It was here that various issues were decided: the laying of the railway line, the opening of public schools, the election of justices of the peace and gubernial councillors, etc.

Similar architectural solutions were presented by the two-storey villa of Dr Neisztab, built by him in Yekaterinoslav, on Pervozvanovskaya Street (now 17 Korolenki Street). This building is an architectural monument of local significance and is included in the protection list under No. 23.

A major challenge for the architect at the time was the design for the renovation of the main body of the Yekaterinoslav Male Gymnasium on Soborny Square. The main aim of the work was to strengthen the building's ceilings. Due to a lack of funding, the work was carried out as temporary: a system of additional wooden supports was installed on the first floor. Kharmansky completed the project for the general renovation of the gymnasium building as early as 1886-1887. At that time, some of the beams were replaced, the walls were strengthened and the main staircase was rebuilt.

In 1888, he participated in the restoration of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the city of Novomoskovsk, built in 1772-1781 by folk craftsman Yakym Pogrebniak from wood, without a single iron nail. Structurally and compositionally, the Holy Trinity Cathedral is a unique work of art of wooden architecture of Ukraine, the only preserved nine-part cathedral in Ukraine, and belongs to the 100 best wooden buildings in the world.

Speaking of the Charmansky family in Yekaterinoslav, it is important to mention their preservation of the spirit of Polishness far from their native country. Their children received home instruction in reading and writing in their mother tongue. A good testimony to this is a letter of 7 October 1879 written by a first-year student at the Institute of Civil Engineers, Zdzislaw Charmanski, to a Polish historian, secretary of the Rus' in the National Government, Marian Dubiecki (1838-1926), who lived in Yekaterinoslav for some time after the end of his exile for participation in the January Uprising.
As it seems, Marian Dubiecki was received favourably in the town by the local Poles and gained the support of Aleksandr Pol, one of the most prominent activists not only of the town but also of the entire Dnieper region - entrepreneur, researcher-archaeologist, philanthropist. It can also be said that he became acquainted with the Charmanski family and even remained on good terms with them and was a moral authority for their elder son. The phrases he used in his letter give the impression that the young man and the well-known exile historian had a good relationship. It is possible that Edward Charmański's brother Julian, also a participant in the uprising, played an important role in these contacts.

It is worth quoting here the thread of Julian Charmanski's biography, as his fate was also intertwined with Yekaterinoslav. He was sentenced, along with Jakub Gieysztor, Antoni Jeleński and Mikołaj Giedroyc, to seven years' hard labour in Siberia, in Usol to be precise. After three years, he was transferred to the category of settlers, living in Krasnoyarsk and then in Tyumen. After ten years, on the basis of an imperial amnesty, he moved to European Russia and left for Yekaterinoslav, as stated in the footnotes to Jakub Gieysztor's Memoirs, received for the study from Julian Charmanski himself, 'for the upbringing of children'. He was married to the daughter of former Vilnius University mathematics professor Antoni Wyrwicz. In 1913, he lived in Kyiv at 126 Welyka Vasylkivska Street.

Edward Charmanski died in 1910, the same year as his wife Sophia, who left this world on 20 June. The sad event in the Charmansky family was evidenced by an obituary posted in the Kharkiv newspaper Yuzhnyi Krai: "Sophia Antonovna Kharmanskaya died on 20 June at 12 o'clock, as reported by her husband, sons and daughter-in-law. The funeral from the Roman Catholic church will take place on 22 June, after the service, which will begin at 10 o'clock in the morning". It can also be surmised that Zdzislaw Kharmansky moved his parents from Ekaterinoslav to Kharkiv.

In conclusion, it should be noted that, unfortunately, there is a lack of archival sources, as the State Archive of the Dnipropetrovsk Region in Dnipro was badly damaged during the Second World War, which does not allow us to reconstruct the architectural activity of Edward Krzysztof Piotr Charmanski. On the other hand, it can be said with absolute certainty that he was a conscientious worker, the few buildings designed by him that have survived to this day characterise him as a designer with good taste, inspired to some extent by the Neo-Gothic style. His greatest achievement was his two sons, Stanislav and Zdzislav, talented architects who continued the family tradition in Yekaterinoslav and Kharkiv and even created beautiful Catholic churches that remain centres of faith and prayer in Left Bank Ukraine to this day.