At the beginning of the 20th century, the architecture of Vilnius began to change. The gubernatorial city embarked on a path towards modernity.

Interwar Vilnius

Vilnius never became a metropolis - today the city has a population of just over half a million, which is not impressive for the capital of a European country. Even in the short period of time between the two World Wars, it did not undergo any fundamental changes in terms of spatial and urban development. However, this is not the significance and value of the activities undertaken during this period. After the long nineteenth century, which - in the words of the Vilnius architect Juliusz Kłos - "exerted all its trivial malice to tarnish this most beautiful city in Poland in terms of its location and monuments to unrecognition", important modernisation processes began; a provincial gubernial city on the fringes of the Russian Empire embarked on a path towards modernity, which was clearly marked in its structure, space and architecture.

The architecture of the Antokol school

The Antokol school building, built between 1930 and 1931, occupies an important place in the array of representative public buildings constructed in the inter-war years. It is located in the north-eastern part of the city known for its magnificent St Peter and St Paul's Church , which was built in the 1930s. It is located in the north-eastern part of the city known for its magnificent St Peter and St Paul 's Church (founded by Hetman Michał Kazimierz Pac).

The building was intended to house two primary schools - the male school named after General Lucjan Żeligowski and the female school named after Władysław Syrokomla. The architectural form was set in the traditional trend. The building as a whole forms a magnificent, almost palace-like structure with classicist elevations. The main elevation of the gymnasium is segmented with semicircular closed windows, and the whole is crowned with a low, wide pediment. Beyond this, however, the building is characterised by a far-reaching modernisation of form. The façades are almost devoid of detail, apart from narrow cornices and simplified triangular pediments over the windows in the front walls. However, this does not imply their high formal quality and the architect's efforts for individual effect.

As was written in the pages of the Vilnius Courier: "special attention was paid to the architectural elaboration of details, even the door handles were made according to drawings and, sometimes, specially made models".

Architect of the school building in Vilnius

The design of the school building was made by Stefan Narębski (1892-1966), one of the most important representatives of the Vilnius architectural community. A graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw Polytechnic, he served as city architect in Vilnius from 1928 to 1937, while from 1935 he taught conservation and interior design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Stefan Batory University. After the Second World War, he settled in Toruń, co-founding the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University together with other Vilnius artists.

Stefan Narębski was a lover of historical architecture and a supporter of national and historical inspirations in modern architecture. He was actively involved in conservation (including the tombs of King Alexander Jagiellon and Queens Barbara and Elisabeth in Vilnius Cathedral, Lew Sapieha's crypt in St Michael's Church and the archbishop's palace in Cathedral Square) and in reconstruction and adaptation of historic buildings, while in architectural design he used creative allusions to the Renaissance, Baroque and even Gothic.

His predilection for modern architecture is also evident in the Antokol building. Both main entrances are emphasised by Baroque portals, which are reminiscent of the Baroque portals of the nearby Sapieha Palace. Above the portals there are cartouches with the coat of arms of Vilnius and the figure of its patron saint, St Christopher.

Co-education in school - architectural solutions

The Antokol building is an interesting illustration of the problem of co-education in interwar education. This issue had a major impact on the design of school buildings. Although co-educational schools had already appeared around the middle of the 19th century. - in elementary education, especially in villages and small towns, which was due to the small number of teachers or school-age children. In higher level education, coeducation was linked to the awakening of women's social consciousness and emancipation movements. Co-education, however, remained a debatable topic in pedagogical theory for a long time, and was also disapproved of by the Catholic Church, e.g. in 1929 Pope Pius XI spoke out strongly against it in his encyclical On the Christian Education of Youth ( Divini Illius Magistri ).

Between the wars, the gender division continued to be observed in the design of male and female schools, even though they were often planned in one building. However, the two parts were separated and each had a separate entrance. Some of the less frequently used school rooms (gymnasium, offices with teaching aids, administrative rooms) were designed as shared, but care was taken to exclude the possibility of boys passing through the female school and vice versa. The design of such 'male-female' schools was encouraged by the tendencies towards axiality and symmetry that were characteristic of the 1920s.

The Vilnius design used a layout consisting of two twin, three-storey wings, connected by a common gymnasium. This type of spatial configuration was used quite often. Similar schools were designed, among others, by the well-known architect Wiesław Lisowski from Łódź, and also appear in Warsaw (in buildings on Otwocka and Bartnicza streets). Of course, the general solid schemes did not exclude the architect's inventiveness with regard to detailed solutions.

The post-war fate of the school building in Antokol

During the Second World War, the Antokol school building was used as a military hospital. In 1944 it was restored to its school function. In 1983 the building was extended and since 2012 it has borne the name of Vilnius Antokol Gymnasium.