Polesie at the time of the Second Republic was an area one third of which was swamps and marshes, and more than half of which was wetland. The Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office was therefore established, and its primary objective was to develop a general project and cost estimate for the land reclamation of the area.

Water Administration of the Second Republic
In 1924, the authorities of the Second Republic regulated matters related to water management. By a decree of the Minister of Public Works, the area of the country was divided into four water districts, subordinate to the Directorates of Waterways in Warsaw, Kraków, Toruń and Vilnius. These, in turn, were subordinate to the local waterways directorates. The tasks and competences of the directorates included, above all, matters concerning the construction and operation of water reservoirs, the regulation and maintenance of rivers and the construction and operation of embankments. In order to organise water management, among other things, the Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office was also established.

Polesie marshes
Polesie was one of the most sparsely populated and economically neglected regions of the Second Republic. One of the many reasons for this backwardness was the hydrogeological conditions. One third of the area was marshes and swamps, and more than half of it was wetland. The solution to this problem was to be found in comprehensive and extensive drainage works. Although in the years 1876-1897, under the direction of General Józef Żyliński, several thousand canals and ditches were dug, the drainage facilities built at the time lacked proper care and maintenance, so they deteriorated over time.

Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office - tasks and activities
By a decree of the President of the Republic of Poland of 15 February 1928, the Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office was established, with its seat in Brest-on-the-Bug, the capital of the Polesie voivodship at that time. The institution was subordinate directly to the Ministry of Public Works, and was headed by a director, appointed by the President on the proposal of the Minister of Public Works. This became Eng. Józef Pruchnik (1873-1951), who had served as Minister of Public Works in the years 1918-1919.

The Bureau's primary objective was to develop a general project and cost estimate for the drainage of Polesia. The drainage project covered the Polesie voivodeship and partly the Volhynia, Białystok and Nowogródek voivodeships, with a total area of 5.8 million hectares (including 1.5 hectares of Polesie marshes). The undertaking was to include both the regulation of rivers and natural and artificial navigable waterways, as well as basic land reclamation on the basis of technical measurements and surveys.

The Bureau was also tasked with preparing a financial plan for the works (the financing of the activities was the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Works). The Bureau was initially intended to operate for four years, but the enormity of the work meant that the project was extended for a further three years in 1932.

Activities were undertaken with great vigour. The press was full of bold comparisons, promising to make Polesie a second Netherlands. As the journalist Ksawery Pruszyński wrote in his book Podróż po Polsce [Journey through Poland] (1937), someone who had not travelled through Polesia, who had not trudged for hours in the sand, who had not ridden the stinking railway, who had not seen the squalor, the poverty, the sickly Jews, the filthy children in packs, the like of which you would never know in central Poland, would not understand the impression made by this simple canal. Here, at once, the land is crossed by a wide trail, and, marked out evenly, as if by a shot, by the reasoned, sure equanimity of the human hand, the great trail rolls evenly through the water. The banks are framed by a palisade of stakes. As far as the eye can see - a long, blue trail.

Headquarters of the Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office
. For the needs of the Bureau, a special building was constructed in the line of representative buildings on Unia Lubelska Street (now Lenina Street). In less than twenty years, imposing public buildings were erected here.

The three-storey Office building was designed in 1928 by the Warsaw architect Julian Jotkiewicz. Unlike the other public buildings on this street, it was oriented with its façade towards the side street Pułaskiego (now Lewoniewskiego Street). In this way, it marked the direction towards the housing estate in the so-called New Quarter (the so-called Clerks' Colony), one of the largest and best-preserved housing complexes in the historic Borderlands.

The building combined office and residential functions and, in fact, architecturally rather resembles a free-standing townhouse. On the ground floor level were the general rooms: the office, the office of the head of the general department, the accountancy office and the archive. The first floor housed the offices of the bureau's management and the detailed photography department (the office of the head and clerk), above it a spacious drawing room, the geodetic and hydrographic departments (each with a room for the head and clerk) and a room for the agricultural and peat survey desk. The top floor was used entirely for staff accommodation.

After the completion of the Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office, the building was handed over to the Communications and Construction Department of the Polesie Provincial Office. In 1944, the headquarters of the 1st Byelorussian Front under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky were placed here. Currently, the building serves as the district court.