Governorate architect and engineer Albert Brodniсki (1830 - after 1893) had a great influence on the architectural shape of Ekaterinoslav in the second half of the 19th century. He designed many buildings of various character both in the city and in the territory of Ekaterinoslav Governorate - some of which are now architectural monuments. He was the author of the original design of St Joseph's Church in Yekaterinoslav. Like other local architects, he worked in a variety of styles - neoclassicism, eclecticism, "neo-Russian style". He became the founder of the dynasty of Polish architects in Yekaterinoslav, and the entire Brodnicki family, which was actively involved in the social and cultural life of the city, is among the most distinguished of its families from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The fate of the Brodnicki family after the Bolshevik occupation of Yekaterinoslav is unknown, but "to this day this family in the person of Albert and his children Sergei, Leonid and Nina is remembered among the inhabitants of the former Yekaterinoslav with special respect".

Albert Brodnicki's ancestors came from Volyn, from the small settlement of Kopachivka (now Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine). His grandfather and grandmother - Bartłomiej and Agnieszka Brodnicki - belonged to the minor Polish gentry who founded this settlement and actively participated in the social life of the region. It should be added that the Brodnicki family possessed an ancient Polish noble coat of arms - Łodzia - mentioned in the oldest surviving Polish heraldry, written down by historian Jan Długosz in 1464-1480. Łodzia is one of 47 coats of arms adopted by the Lithuanian boyars under the horodels union of 1413. The Polish genealogist and herald Kasper Niesiecki (1682-1744), in the pages of his best-known 5463-page edition of the 1839-1845 volume "Herbarz polski Kaspra Niesiecki powiększony dodatkami z późniejszych autorów, rękopismów, dowód urzędowych i wydany przez Jana Nep. Bobrowicz" (vol. 2) placed an entry "Brodnicki herbu Łodzia".

In 1797, a son, Wincenty, was born into the Brodnicki family. In the mid 1820s he married Apolonia Tunska. The couple moved to the village of Karpyłówka Kamień in the Kaszyrsky District (now Volyn Oblast, Ukraine). They had two children - a daughter Justyna was born in 1825 and a son Albert in 1830. After some time, the family moved to the village of Rastov (now the Turzysky district, Volyn region, Ukraine). There, two sons were born to them: Tomasz and Stanisław (who died at the age of one year). Unfortunately, we only have this scanty information about the family. It is also impossible to establish what caused the young Albert Brodnicki, living with his parents in the countryside, to choose a career as an architect. What can be said with certainty is that his parents provided their son with the kind of secondary education that allowed him to pursue higher education in the northern capital of the Russian Empire. It is likely that the boy attended some sort of grammar school.

What is known is that the 15-year-old Albert went to study in the distant and unknown St Petersburg, where he studied for seven years within the walls of the Building School, the main educational centre of the Russian Empire for the training of building personnel. After graduating from this school, he was awarded a diploma in civil engineering. From 1852 onwards, his life was forever linked to Yekaterinoslav, where, after graduation, he was sent to work as an assistant to the Yekaterinoslav Gubernial Road and Building Commission. This was the usual practice for graduates of this university, who were sent to gubernial cities throughout the empire. Małgorzata Omilanowska rightly noted that: "After graduating from the school, they began their clerical careers as architects or engineers throughout Russia, very rarely in the lands of Poland. Some of them went on to considerable careers'.

At this point, it is worth noting that the young - then twenty-two years old - Pole Albert Brodnicki ended up in a town where there was a small Polish community. It should be noted that, as late as 1842, the local Catholic community had made a request to the Russian authorities for permission to build a church. This meant that the Polish population was quite organised and at the same time formed as a self-sufficient unit and economically strong, as they were able to erect and equip a church at their own expense. Despite the fact that this permission was still granted on 11 May 1844, great difficulties were also encountered in establishing a Catholic parish in the town. Therefore, it was only a few years later that the architect Albert Brodnicki designed the original shape of the church. This very fact confirms the thesis of historian Zygmunt Łukawski that the Polish diasporas in the Russian Empire sought architects in their communities for such tasks. "It probably does not need to be explained that in the course of construction, Catholics tried to use their own professional forces to the maximum. More often than not, the design of the church was drawn up and the construction supervised by a local architect - a Pole".

At the end of the 19th century, according to the first census of the Russian Empire conducted in 1897, 3418 of the 112,800 citizens in Yekaterinoslav were Poles. Among them were doctors, lawyers, teachers, railway workers, but mostly they were military men who belonged to local units of the Russian army. Poles were also involved in the public life of the town. A telling example of a family that played a great role in the life of Yekaterinoslav was that of Albert Brodnicki.

It should be noted that our hero went through all the rungs of the professional ladder up to the gubernial architect. Until February 1860, he worked as an assistant architect at the Ekaterinoslav Gubernial Road and Building Commission. From February to April 1860 he served as Yekaterinoslav gubernatorial architect. In 1861-1864, as an architect, he performed work for the Ekaterinoslav Gubernial Road and Building Commission. In 1865, the administration dealing with construction matters was reformed in the Russian Empire: the gubernial road and construction commissions were abolished and construction divisions were created in the structure of the gubernial boards. Therefore, in 1865, Albert Brodnitsky became a member of the newly established Building Branch of the Yekaterinoslav Gubernial Board. Within ten years - 1865-1875 - he worked as a Yekaterinoslav gubernatorial architect.

According to Dnepr historian Maxim Kavun, Brodnitsky's career was helped by the fact that he married the sister of local architect Dmytr Savitsky and therefore became his assistant. An interesting description of Albert Brodnitsky was given by Andrei Dostoevsky (brother of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky), who worked as Yekaterinoslav gubernial architect from 1860 to 1865. He wrote of his successor as follows: "He was a very skilful and experienced technician... As a man he was a very kind and wise gentleman, and in addition a comedian by nature and a good storyteller... After my departure from Ekaterinoslav in 1865 he took my place, that is, he was appointed Ekaterinoslav gubernial architect." It should also be remembered that Albert Brodnitsky was one of the youngest gubernial architects in the Russian Empire.

His expediency, as a very important character trait, is also evidenced by another telling fact: Brodnitsky, after graduating from the Building School, was given the lowest - 14th - civil rank in the empire's rank table: collegiate secretary (collegiate registrar), and after years of professional work he was given the high title of 5th class - state counsellor (statskiy sovetnik). People with this title held offices in the public administration as deputy departmental director, deputy governor, head of the finance department in the governorate.

Albert Brodnicki's duties as a gubernial architect included many tasks: laying out facade plans, drawings and cost estimates for all government buildings, reconstructions, repairs to buildings belonging to the Main Directorate of Communications (Glavnoye uprawleniye putej soobszczenij) and public buildings. He supervised the work carried out at the state's expense, was in charge of managing construction workers, and prepared numerous technical reports.

He supervised the renovation and reconstruction of public edifices. At the end of the 1850s he repaired the Gubernial Post Office on Ekaterinskaya Avenue (the main street of the city, now Dmytr Yavornitsky Avenue 62), In 1860 he repaired the building of the Gubernial Noble Assembly. It was originally the Potemkin Palace, built between 1786 and 1791, i.e. the palace of Prince Grigory Potemkin-Tavriy, a state and military activist in the Russian Empire. The creator of the palace was the architect Ivan Starov (1745-1808), one of the founders of Russian classicism. He built the building in strict classicist forms. Today, it is the Palace of Students of the Oles Gonchar National University (1 Shevchenko Avenue), which is included in the list of architectural monuments of national significance and is considered one of the oldest buildings in modern Dnipro.

Brodnitsky also designed a number of buildings of public character erected in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. In 1857, he carried out an inventory on the territory of the prison castle in Bakhmut. In the late 1850s, he drew up a design for the Volosko-Chutorsky postal station. In 1861, he supervised the construction of a prison castle for 300 people in Rostov-on-Don. Between 1857 and 1861, he developed three versions of a design for the adaptation of the two-storey production building of the former Yekaterinoslav State Cloth Factory into the barracks of the Garrison Battalion (now 106 Dmytr Yavornitsky Avenue). This edifice, built in the early 1890s in classicist style, is also considered one of the oldest buildings in the city. In 1863, he worked on a project to decorate the Great Hall of the Assembly of the Nobility for a ball to celebrate the arrival of the heir to the throne of the Russian Empire in Yekaterinoslav.

He was involved in building and repairing bridges in Yekaterinoslav and in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate, unfortunately, mostly not preserved today (1855.: design of a bridge over the Orel River near the village of Pereshczepino, Novomoskovsky district, Yekaterinoslav gubernia (town of Pereshczepino, Novomoskovsky district, Dnipropetrovsk region); In the mid 1850s: design of a bridge over the Mokra Sura River on the Yekaterinoslav-Nikopol postal route. 1859: design of a bridge over the Mokra Moskovka River in the city of Alexandrovsk (now Zaporizhzhia). 1860: designs for the repair of bridges over the Zerebec and Ovrag rivers in the Alexandrovsk district on the Kichkas crossing of the Dnieper. 1860: project for the repair of the bridge over the Kilchen River in the village of Podgorod (Podgorod city, Dnipropetrovsk district, Dnipropetrovsk region). Between 1869 and 1871: design of a stone bridge in Yekaterinoslav between Nagorna Street (now Patorzhinsky Street) and Cossack Street (now Starokozacha Street). During the Crimean War - 1853-1855 - he carried out the construction of temporary bridges for the army in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. It is noteworthy that during the Crimean War, the city was an important hinterland and transit point, and the eminent surgeon Nikolai Pirogov worked in one of the local hospitals.

In 1872-1874, Brodnitsky was a member of the building committee and head of the construction of the teaching corps of the Yekaterinoslav Theological Seminary (35 Dmytr Yavornitsky Avenue).

Unfortunately, the fate of Albert Brodnitsky's architectural legacy in Yekaterinoslav is tragic. Almost none of the buildings designed by him have survived to the present day. This was influenced by the Second World War, destruction and reconstructions in later times. However, several buildings have survived, albeit in a modified form.

Albert Brodnicki's great confidence and recognition as a capable architect was evidenced by the fact that the local Polish population commissioned him to design the church. He thus became the author of the original design of the future St Joseph's Church, built in Yekaterinoslav in 1869-1877 with the money of the local Catholic parish. The plot of land for the church was located along Ekaterininsky Prospect, on the grounds of the city park. Albert Brodnitsky designed a small church in Gothic style, having traditional architectural solutions, but at the same time inspiring. The main façade on the prospect side was decorated with two tall bell towers, a magnificent entrance portal and an angel with a cross above the nave. As the local Polish colony was not very large, a single nave was planned for the church, lit by tall, soaring windows and ending with a massive altar apse. Above the altar, on the roof, there was to be a tall openwork tower. The design of the church by Brodnicki, presented to the Technical and Building Committee of the Ministry of the Interior, was not approved. In addition to reservations about the architectural solutions, there were serious doubts about the strength of the structure of the building.

As a result, the project was significantly altered by Committee member, architect Piotr Merkulov. The width of the church was increased slightly, while the height of the belfry towers was reduced (the total height including spires remained unchanged). The height of the nave was also reduced. The decoration of the church façade was also changed, simplifying it considerably, so that it was closer to the Romanesque style. On 16 July 1869, the new architectural design of the Yekaterinoslav church was approved by the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Empire. Construction of St Joseph's Church began on 17 June 1872, was completed in 1877 and consecrated in 1878. For the provincial architecture of Ekaterinoslav at the time, the architectural shape of the church was quite unusual. A massive building grew up among the two-storey buildings, and its two massive towers were visible from several quarters away. The church immediately became the centre of life for the Polish community, and it also brought together local Catholics of various nationalities.

The architect's personal life was more successful than the fate of his designs. Albert Brodnicki married a local noblewoman, Irina Savitskaya (1837-?), daughter of Vasyl Savitsky, a representative of a well-known and distinguished Ukrainian Cossack-Savitsky family from the Left Bank of Ukraine. The couple had two sons, Leonid (1864-1907) and Sergei (?-?), and a daughter, Nina (1867-?). Leonid Brodnitsky, like his father, became a well-known architect and public figure of Yekaterinoslav.

Sergei Brodnitsky, after graduating from the local Classical Gymnasium in 1878, entered the Faculty of Law at Kharkiv University, graduating as a lawyer. He was for a long time chairman of the Yekaterinoslav District Council and a city councillor. He headed the People's Reading Committee and had considerable artistic skills. A well-known talented reciter of Russian and Ukrainian poems, he often performed at organised evenings for the benefit of poor pupils of the local Mining School. He shared a friendship with the prominent Ukrainian historian Dmytr Yavornitsky (1855-1940), for whom his brother Leonid designed a five-storey building (now the historian's museum) in 1905. In 1902. Sergey Brodnitsky supported the idea of opening a history museum in Yekaterinoslav under the leadership of Dmytr Yavornitsky. He later became chairman of the council of this museum himself. He and his wife Sofia were also active in the field of public education.

Nina Brodnitskaya, like her brothers, was an active social activist in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. From 1893, after graduating from the Music Conservatory in St Petersburg, she worked as a music teacher at the Yekaterinoslav Yeparchial School for Women. She was married to the civil servant Boris Hochgejnem (from 1896). Their fate from the time after the occupation of Ukraine by the Bolsheviks is unknown.

As local scholars of Dnipro history note, the exact date of Albert Brodnitsky's death is so far unknown. Unfortunately, the Yekaterinoslav press of the time, namely the Yekaterinoslavskaya Ziemskaya Gazeta, is not yet available to the author - it is likely that the obituary of the respected architect and social activist published there could be found in its pages. At this point, it only remains to point out that Odesa-born civil engineer with Polish roots Gavrilo Baranovsky (1860-1920), author of a unique bibliographic publication from 1893 containing information about 1,024 graduates of the Institute of Civil Engineers - and, at the time of Albert Brodnitsky's studies, the Building School - in St Petersburg in 1842-1892 and about their professional work, summarised the biographical note about Albert Brodnitsky: "In this chat Albert Vikentyevich is retired". This means that the architect died later than 1893.

Albert Brodnicki was remembered by his contemporaries as a gubernatorial architect who reliably carried out his work in the administrative field. He was undoubtedly a professional and left behind a variety of buildings that have not survived to the present day. He was also a good father to his three children, who became respected residents of Yekaterinoslav. Together with his elder son Leonid, they created an architectural dynasty in the city that was respected and appreciated.