In 1919, a decree was issued by the Commissioner General on the formation of the judicial system in the Eastern Territories. Under this legislation, the Vilnius Regional Court was established on 24 June 1919. Its seat was located in the building of the former Gubernial Court, situated in the most representative street of the city in the 19th century - Georgiyevsky Prospekt, renamed Adam Mickiewicz Street after the restoration of independence. The imposing, representative building was constructed between 1897 and 1899 by architect Mikhail Prozorov, who developed the design according to an earlier concept by the chief designer of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Empire - Professor Valery Prussakov.

History of the building

After the building of the former Gubernial Court was transferred to the Vilnius Regional Court, it became apparent that, despite its large surface area, it was insufficient for the efficient functioning of the justice system; it was therefore decided to enlarge the volume of the building by an additional wing. The new building, adjacent to the Regional Court building on the side of 3 Maja Street, housed the Municipal Court. The design by Jerzy Paprocki was prepared at the Construction Office at the Regional Directorate of Public Works in Vilnius and approved on 1 October 1928. In the same month, a contract was signed with the firm of "Jan Gumowski and Adrian Krzyżanowski inżynierowie, sp. z o. o." and construction began. The architect Otton Krasnopolski was entrusted with directing the work and drawing up the execution drawings. The construction and finishing work lasted a year - it was officially completed with a protocol of acceptance of the works on 26 September 1929.

Architecture - controversy and discussion

The three-storey Municipal Court building was built on an elongated rectangular plan, with a prominent risalit in the rear elevation. On the ground floor in the front passage, there were spacious rooms of the civil and criminal chancery, and on the upper floors there were court rooms. The façade from 3 Maja Street had classicist forms, with an axial shallow risalit in the central part, emphasised by a pseudo-portico with rusticated Tuscan pilasters in great order. The façade was crowned by a full attic with the prominence of the state emblem in a cartouche on the central axis. The relief in white cement was made by the Vilnius sculptor Piotr Hermanowicz.

In relation to the monumental main building of the Courts of Justice, with its massive extended body, the adjacent seat of the Municipal Court was much less imposing. The lower storeys of the new building caused a disproportion in the height of the two buildings, and the sparse form of the façade contrasted with the rich decoration of the eclectic architecture. In a critical press note, there were accusations of a lack of stylistic fit, of stuccoing the difference in levels with an attic and of describing the whole as "government building trash". In the discussion, it was pointed out that 'many in Vilnius deplore the harm being done to the aged Courts Building by the imposition on it of a mésalliance with an ''artificial annex''.

In response to the allegations, the Vilnius Provincial Office explained that the Municipal Court building is not an 'annex', but a completely separate building, also from a stylistic point of view. The official reply also included a characterisation of the District Court building, whose architecture 'cannot be recommended as a model for purposeful architectural solutions (...) as a creation of an eminently Russian taint from a period of declining architectural taste'. This telling opinion was part of a discourse on the shape of Vilnius' new architecture and its relationship to its nineteenth-century legacy, a debate that was constantly present in the local artistic and scientific community in the interwar period.

Historical address: 3 Maja Street 3

Contemporary address: Vasario 16-osios g. 1