Novogrudok grew from a provincial town to a provincial town during the Second Polish Republic. This town is significant for both Polish history and culture.

The administrative structure of the Second Polish Republic was imperfect and throughout the inter-war period it was not spared criticism. Among other things, the press wrote about "artificial provinces". Most of the provincial capitals were located in the largest urban centres, but apart from them, this function was also given to medium-sized towns of a few dozen thousand inhabitants, and there was even a town of only a few thousand inhabitants in this group. This was Novogrudok, a town of great importance to Polish history and culture, primarily because of Adam Mickiewicz, who was associated with it. During the partitions and after the First World War, however, Novogrudok was just one of many provincial towns in the north-eastern Borderlands.

The seats of the provincial authorities were usually located in large, representative palace buildings or stately public buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries. There was no such building in Novogrudok, so it was decided to build a specially designed edifice. This is worth remembering, as new buildings for provincial offices were rare in the interwar years. Apart from Novogrudok, they were only erected in three cities - in Brest-on-the-Bug, Katowice (function combined with the Silesian Sejm) and Toruń (eventually the building housed the Regional Directorate of the State Railways).

Provincial Office Building

There is a lack of certain data about the building of the Voivodship Office in Novogrudok; neither the designer nor the exact date of construction is unknown. However, the architectural form makes it possible to determine the time of construction to be around 1925, as it was based on the most widespread model of traditionalism at the time. In this case, the designer decided to use motifs of modern origin, more specifically characteristic elements and details of the Polish provincial Renaissance and Baroque.

According to the architect's idea, the two-storey building was covered with a rather high hipped roof. In the middle of the façade there is a large avant-corps (the part of the façade protruding in front of its main line), crowned with a two-storey volute gable in a form referring to the Baroque. The attic within the risalit has the form of an arcaded arcade with pillars supported by scarps (placed in an unusual way in front of the pillars). The windows are placed in panels topped by arcades.

With these measures, the architect clearly emphasised the Polish character of the architecture, which was very desirable for a building representing Polish authority in the Borderlands. At the same time, by using motifs typical of historical provincial architecture, he integrated the building into the small-town landscape of Novogrudok.

The Governor's House

A residential house for the Novogrudok voivode stood next to the provincial office. It was built using a typical project of a residential building for starosts (so-called IIC type), made in 1924 by Jerzy Beill (1885-1976) as part of a campaign to build houses for government officials in the Borderlands. This type was used in Nesvizh, Baranovichi, Drohiczyn and Stołpce, among other places.

The single-family detached building with a near-square rectangular ground plan was covered with a high hipped roof with façades on the axis of each façade. In the basic version of the project, the façade was distinguished by an enlarged façade. In addition, the façade was decorated with four pilasters placed on the axis of the building, throughout its height (in the so-called great order), which were closed with a triangular gable. This created a kind of portico, which gave the whole building the characteristics of the so-called court style. For the house for the Novgorod governor, a slightly modified version of the design was used, in which the pilasters of the portico were replaced by full columns. In this way, the architecture gained in monumentality.

The same design was realised as the starosta's house in Slonim. It can be thought that the designer wanted to create an analogy between the representation of Polish administrative power and the Polish borderland nobility of pre-partition times. The functional programme included four rooms (sleeping, study, dining and playroom), a kitchen and a bathroom with toilet. The dining room was equipped with a recreational terrace on the façade side.

Both buildings have been preserved in good condition. The Provincial Office building now serves as the seat of the local government of Novogrudok - the District Executive Committee. In the post-war years, the former governor's house had its basement extended.