The Postal Savings Bank was the main state financial institution of the Second Republic and the largest depositary of Poles' savings. The bank enjoyed a high degree of public trust and was perceived as stable and more secure than private banks.

The Postal Savings Bank was established in 1919 by a decree of the Head of State Józef Piłsudski and Prime Minister Ignacy Paderewski. It was modelled on analogous establishments first established in Great Britain (1861) and later in Austria (1883). The Galician Postsparkasse became a direct point of reference and model on which the P.K.O. system of functioning in the Polish lands was based. The bank was intended to facilitate monetary circulation in the reborn Republic and to spread care for the savings of broad sections of the population.

The bank's headquarters were located in a new building erected in 1922 on Jasna Street in Warsaw. In addition, P.K.O. had stationary branches in Poznań, Katowice, Kraków, Łódź, Vilnius, Lwów and Gdynia; the bank also used a network of more than four thousand post offices throughout the country.

History of the Postal Savings Bank building in Vilnius

The Vilnius branch of the Pocztowa Kasa Oszczędności (Postal Savings Bank) was launched in 1929; it was initially located in a tenement house at 7 Mickiewicza Street, and later in the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 1935, the decision was made to build its own premises in Vilnius. The conceptual design was carried out by Juliusz Żórawski and Zbigniew Puget, graduates of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw Polytechnic (1927 and 1929), employed there as assistants. Both were already highly regarded Warsaw modernist avant-garde artists at the time, and were the authors of the daring concept for the P.K.O. building in Poznań, which won second prize in the 1934 competition announced by the local branch of the bank.

The building was located on the representative Mickiewicza Street, opposite Orzeszkowa Square. The location of prestigious financial institutions (the BGK bank building was situated in the immediate vicinity of P.K.O.) was combined with the urban planning concept of extending this part of Mickiewicza Street into a square for the planned Adam Mickiewicz monument and providing it with appropriate exposure. The design of the monument by Henryk Kuna, together with the development of the surroundings, was approved in 1934.

Construction of the P.K.O. building, together with the accompanying residential building, began in October 1936; the architect Jan Borowski was appointed works manager, and also drew up the execution drawings. The construction work, carried out at a very fast pace, was carried out by the company "M. Łempicki S.A." of Warsaw. In 1937, the finishing work and furnishing of the interior began; before the end of the year, the work was finalised. On 12 December 1937, the opening and consecration of the building took place. The solemn ceremony was attended by representatives of the highest state authorities who were in Vilnius at the time for an economic conference: Minister of the Treasury, Deputy Prime Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, Labour Minister Marian Zyndram-Kościałkowski, Marshal of the Polish Senate Aleksander Prystor, and many other distinguished guests. The consecration act was performed by Archbishop Romuald Jałbrzykowski. The speeches almost unanimously stressed the role of the P.K.O. bank in the economic life of Poland, and its contribution to the development of the eastern lands.

Architecture and interiors

The complex of the Postal Savings Bank in Vilnius consisted of a five-storey main building and, connected to it by a link, a lower, three-storey residential building with a commercial base.

The main building, slightly set back from the frontage line, was built in a reinforced concrete construction, infilled with brick. The elevations were faced with sandstone panels, with the plinth and main entrance portal of granite. The imposing body of the office building was contrasted with the light, modernist in form building housing the bank's administrative staff; the ground floor, with its large, glazed shop windows, housed the "Orbis" travel agency and the "Gebethner and Wolf" bookshop.

In the main building of the P.K.O., on the ground floor there was an extensive operating room with cashier stations, above that - offices, a conference room and the president's office; the top two floors were occupied by the State Control Chamber; in the underground part there was a treasury room. The interiors of the building were finished to a high standard, with noble materials used in the common areas: the vestibule, hall and staircase were lined with marble, the desktops of the cash desks were marble, and the reinforced concrete pillars in the operating theatre were concealed by fluted stucco cladding. The wall opposite the entrance in the operating theatre was decorated with a full-width allegorical frieze painted al secco by Ludomir Sleńdziński. A large triptych, seven metres wide, depicted the apotheosis of Labour and Thrift, the effect of which is the Fortune depicted in the central section.

Ludomir Sleńdziński, professor at the Department of Monumental Painting and for many years dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University, was one of the most respected and admired artists of interwar Vilnius. Entrusting him with the decoration of the main hall of the P.K.O. Bank was a tribute to the local creative community and at the same time an emphasis on the importance of the place.

The façades of the main building were characterised by a balanced, vertical composition and symmetrical articulation through a regular rhythm of lisens in great order and vertical rows of windows placed between them. Devoid of detail - apart from the delicate profile of the crowning cornice and the fluted panels between the windows of the first and second storey on the front elevation - they gave the impression of austere solemnity and dignity. The style of the main building of the Postal Savings Bank was thus one of the few examples of architecture of modernised classicism and the monumental trend in Vilnius.

Historical address: 16a Mickiewicza Street

Contemporary address: Gedimino Prospektas 12