A bright mansion, surrounded by lime trees. A porch overgrown with wild vines, with stately pale pink mallows adorning the front walls. This is the common image of a house inhabited by a Polish family in love with the Romantic tradition, who read "Pan Tadeusz" to their children every evening. It is also, to this day, a fairly popular image of a space where life goes on peacefully and harmoniously.

It is no coincidence that the manor house style also appealed to the architects involved in the Ministry of Public Works' housing programme. It was started in the Borderlands in 1924 and had to do with Polish officials settling there. The borderland towns were destroyed and those that survived could not be considered modern. It proved difficult in these conditions to find suitable accommodation for Polish administrative staff and their families.

The Polish authorities were then faced with the challenge of building houses that were both comfortable and met the requirements of modernity. Progress and innovation, not only in the realm of architecture, were characteristic of the interwar period. The idea of modernity and modernisation was placed at the centre of social processes as much as anything else. Interwar Poles craved novelty and wanted it to become part of their everyday life.

The architects' response to the objectives set by the authorities was to stylise the buildings into manor houses, while at the same time applying the then innovative technical solutions (e.g. water heating). Alcoves, column porches, broken roofs, single-storey and often wooden buildings evoke the Polish landscape. The houses were meant to symbolise Polish culture and refer to (perhaps its most explicit) imagery.

The officials who lived there did not necessarily read Mickiewicz's works in the evenings, but - although they dreamt of progress - tradition was close to their hearts. Especially as it was skilfully combined with modern urban planning solutions that made life more comfortable. The clerk colonies, which were built according to the then progressive idea of the garden city, were meant to provide it.

The Polish housing estates were thus an oasis of modernity, modernisation, but also of Polishness. The ideas of the Polish authorities were widely publicised, and interest in them was fuelled by the local press. As well as reporting on the progress of the works, editors also included more fine verse pieces, such as this one from Głos Poleski in 1921:

[...] The whole clerical crowd
idzi w swoich sennach
A dwelling as it looks,
And its own roof. [...]

The surviving materials and plans of the colony are proof that indeed nothing was left to chance. The houses are spacious multi- or single-family dwellings, built not infrequently in a green part of the city, and still additionally surrounded by lawns, flowerbeds, among which ribbons of alleys meander. There is no shortage of play areas for children and adults - the casino was one of them. It was the centre of the colony's social and cultural life. Often, as exemplified by the building of the casino in Brest, these were buildings located in the central part of the colony, grand and distinguished by their ornamentation. Polish officials and their families thus had a comfortable place to live, but also to rest and entertain themselves.

Despite the predilection for the manor house style, care was taken to ensure that the buildings formed a whole with the borderland landscape, did not divide space or remain outside the urban arteries. The Polish officials' colonies had to be - in the intention of the plan's authors - integrated with the city and nature, just as the work of the Polish administration had to serve to put the affairs of the whole community in order.

The Polonika Institute in 2023, together with Prof. Michał Pszczółkowski, carried out the second stage of the survey of official colonies in Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. The buildings that still exist today are now private houses. The key in this situation was to establish relationships with their owners, who, by making their space available, made it possible to create an architectural description. Some of the existing former clerical colonies still need to be located, which is an additional challenge in difficult geopolitical conditions.

The researcher conducted research trips and additional searches in Polish and foreign archives in 2023. The result of this work will be a publication that will be both a return to historical assumptions and implementation and a description of contemporary realities and will conclude this multi-year project in 2025, the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Ministry of Public Works' notebooks.

Prof. Michał Pszczółkowski is academically affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and the University of Zielona Góra. For several years, he has been involved in the history of architecture, with a particular focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. He has published, among others, in "Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte", "Centropa. A Journal of Central European Architecture and Related Arts', 'Zapiski Historyczne', 'Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki' and 'Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki', and book publications include: "Architektura użyteczności publicznej II Rzeczypospolitej" (2nd volumes, 2914-1015), "Architektura szkolna II Rzeczypospolitej" (2017) or "Toruńska kamienica czynszowa w latach 1850-1914" (2021). In 2017, he was awarded the Oskar Halecki Prize in the 10th edition of the 'Historical Book of the Year' competition (readers' vote in the category: best scientific book for the publication 'Kresy nowoczesny. Architecture in the Eastern Lands of the Second Polish Republic 1921-1939"). Honoured with the badge "Merited for Polish Culture" (2019) and the Bronze Medal "Merited for Culture Gloria Artis" (2021).