The Postal Savings Bank was the main state-owned financial institution of the Second Polish Republic and the largest custodian of Poles’ savings. The bank enjoyed a high level 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 the Prime Minister, Ignacy Paderewski. It was modelled on similar institutions that had first been established in Great Britain (1861) and later in Austria (1883). The Galician Postsparkasse became a direct point of reference and the model on which the P.K.O.’s operating system in the Polish territories was based. The bank was intended to facilitate monetary transactions in the reborn Republic of Poland and to safeguard the savings of broad sections of the population.

The bank’s head office was situated in a new building erected in 1922 on Jasna Street in Warsaw. Furthermore, P.K.O. had permanent branches in Poznań, Katowice, Kraków, Łódź, Vilnius, Lviv and Gdynia; the bank also utilised a network of over four thousand post offices throughout the country.

The history of the construction of the Postal Savings Bank building in Vilnius

The Vilnius branch of the Postal Savings Bank opened in 1929; it was initially housed in a tenement block at 7 Mickiewicza Street, and later in the building of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. In 1935, a decision was made to build the institution’s own headquarters in Vilnius. The conceptual design was drawn up by Juliusz Żórawski and Zbigniew Puget, graduates of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology (1927 and 1929), who were employed there as assistants. Both were already, at that time, highly regarded architects within the Warsaw modernist avant-garde circle and the designers behind the bold concept for the P.K.O. building in Poznań, which won second prize in a competition announced in 1934 organised by the bank’s local branch.

The building was situated on the prestigious Mickiewicza Street, opposite Orzeszkowej Square. The location of the headquarters of prestigious financial institutions in this area (the BGK bank building was situated in the immediate vicinity of the P.K.O.) was part of an urban planning concept to widen this section of Mickiewicza Street into a square for the construction of the planned Adam Mickiewicz monument and to ensure it was suitably showcased. The design for the monument by Henryk Kuna, together with the landscaping of the surrounding area, was approved in 1934.

Construction of the P.K.O. building, together with the accompanying residential block, began in October 1936; the architect Jan Borowski was appointed site manager and also drew up the working drawings. The construction work, carried out at a very rapid pace, was undertaken by the company ‘M. Łempicki S.A.’ from Warsaw. In 1937, work began on the finishing touches and fitting out of the interior; the work was completed before the end of the year. On 12 December 1937, the building was officially opened and consecrated. The solemn ceremony was attended by representatives of the highest state authorities, who were in Vilnius at the time for an economic conference: the Minister of the Treasury and Deputy Prime Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, the Minister of Labour Marian Zyndram-Kościałkowski, the Marshal of the Senate of the Republic of Poland, Aleksander Prystor, and many other distinguished guests. The consecration was performed by Archbishop Romuald Jałbrzykowski. In their speeches, speakers almost unanimously emphasised the role of PKO Bank in Poland’s economic life, as well as its contribution to the development of the eastern territories.

Architecture and interiors

The Postal Savings Bank complex in Vilnius consisted of a five-storey main building and, connected to it by a passageway, a lower, three-storey residential building with a ground-floor retail area.

The main building, set back slightly from the street frontage, was constructed of reinforced concrete filled with brick. The façades were clad in sandstone slabs, with a granite plinth and the main entrance portal. The imposing form of the office block contrasted with the light, modernist-style building housing flats for the bank’s administrative staff; on the ground floor, with its large, glazed display windows, space was set aside for the ‘Orbis’ Travel Agency and the ‘Gebethner and Wolf’ bookshop.

On the ground floor of the main P.K.O. building there was a spacious operations hall with teller counters; above this were office spaces, a conference room and the chairman’s office; the top two storeys were occupied by the State Audit Office; the vault was situated in the basement. The building’s interiors were finished to a high standard, with the use of fine materials in the communal areas: the vestibule, hall and staircase were clad in marble, as were the cashiers’ counters, whilst the reinforced concrete columns in the operations hall were concealed beneath grooved stucco cladding. The wall directly opposite the entrance to the operations hall was decorated across its entire width with an allegorical frieze painted al secco by Ludomir Sleńdziński. The grand, seven-metre-wide triptych depicted the apotheosis of Labour and Thrift, the result of which is Fortuna, shown in the central panel.

Ludomir Sleńdziński, a professor in the Department of Monumental Painting and long-standing dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University, was one of the most respected and admired artists in interwar Vilnius. Entrusting him with the decoration of the main hall of the P.K.O. Bank was an expression of recognition for the local artistic community, whilst also emphasising the prestige of the venue.

The façades of the main building were characterised by a balanced, vertical composition and symmetrical articulation, achieved through the regular rhythm of pilasters arranged in a grand order and the vertical rows of windows situated between them. Devoid of ornamentation – apart from the delicate profile of the crowning cornice and the fluted panels between the windows on the first and second storeys of the front façade – they conveyed an 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 modernised Classicism and the monumental style in Vilnius.

Historical address: 16-a Mickiewicza Street

Current address: Gedimino Prospektas 12