The De­part­ment of Ar­chi­tec­ture of the 19th and 20th century is com­prised of a col­lec­tion of modern ar­chi­tec­ture, in­clud­ing ar­ti­facts from the years 1800-1914, and a col­lec­tion of in­ter­war ar­chi­tec­ture that in­cludes objects from the period between 1914 and 1945. Both col­lec­tions have a com­pletely dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter. The first con­tains a variety of ar­ti­facts, from the col­lec­tion of graph­ics, draw­ings and sten­cils, through an im­pres­sive (both in terms of its quantiy and quality) col­lec­tion of ar­chi­tec­ture-re­lated artis­tic crafts, to a small col­lec­tion of fur­ni­ture. The second, more ho­mo­ge­neous col­lec­tion con­sists mainly of design ma­te­ri­als doc­u­ment­ing the de­vel­op­ment of ar­chi­tec­ture (mainly Polish) in the years 1914-1945 and the archives con­nected with the life and ac­tiv­ity of out­stand­ing Polish ar­chi­tects of that period.

The Ar­chi­tec­ture of the 19th century

Col­lec­tion from the years 1800–1914 amounts to around 3090 ar­ti­facts, out of which almost 1400 are icono­graphic ar­ti­facts. It in­cludes 730 graph­ics that depict old and modern ar­chi­tec­ture, major urban plan­ning schemes, as well as city ver­nac­u­lars and panoramas.

Part of the prints present ancient build­ings from Egypt and Italy, others present new build­ings of growing Eu­ro­pean cap­i­tals such as Berlin, Paris, there are also rep­re­sen­ta­tions of in­ter­est­ing mon­u­ments from Lower Silesia and Wroclaw. The graph­ics doc­u­ment­ing the region are the works of eminent Sile­sian en­gravers, in­clud­ing Max­i­m­il­ian Gross­mann, Otto Probst and Robert Geissler. The iconog­ra­phy col­lec­tion is com­ple­mented by draw­ings (over 70), designs (around 120), city plans and more than 300 stencil sheets, among which the most famous are those made by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

In the col­lec­tion of iconog­ra­phy, two oil paint­ings by Adal­bert Woelfl (Ulica Kurzy Targ and Kamienica Pod Gryfami), Carl Denner’s gouache over­look­ing the Im­pe­r­ial Bridge (now Grun­waldzki Bridge) and a wa­ter­color by Emil de Canver -Nowy Ratusz are par­tic­u­larly significant.Poloni­cas con­sti­tute another note­wor­thy part of the col­lec­tion: a drawing of an angel from the poly­chromy in St. Mary’s Basil­ica in Cracow signed by Jan Matejko, card­board of theDies Irae stained glass by Kaz­imierz Sichul­ski and lith­o­graphs by Napoleon Orda de­pict­ing Bor­der­land settlements.

The col­lec­tion of artis­tic crafts from the years 1800-1914 mainly con­sists of tiles and flag­stones (over 360 in total), door locks (almost 800 pieces), ceramic (22) and cast iron (7) fur­naces, various ar­chi­tec­tural details made of metal or stucco, window glazing and dec­o­ra­tive doors. These works of art from the nine­teenth and early twen­ti­eth century use the or­na­men­ta­tion typical for his­tori­cism and secession.

Most of them are in­dus­trial prod­ucts, mainly mass-pro­duced, and made per­fectly on the basis of good artis­tic designs. Par­tic­u­larly note­wor­thy is a unique set of over 140 stained glass and dec­o­ra­tive glazing el­e­ments, made in the cen­turies-old tra­di­tion of hand­made craftsmanship.

The quality of the stained-glass col­lec­tion points its prove­nance to the renowned work­shops from the Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries. It is also con­firmed by the pre­served sig­na­tures of some of the ar­ti­facts: Jo­hannes Prech­tel, broth­ers Andreas and Lorenz Helmle, Fritz Geiges and Adolph Seiler.

Many of the tiles and fur­naces in the col­lec­tion were created in the well-known fac­to­ries of the Te­ichert broth­ers in Meissen, famous Velten ti­leries near Berlin and in the work­shops in Berlin and Wroclaw.

The only group dif­fer­ent from the German ce­ram­ics is a set of Za­kopane tiles from Koliba villa de­signed by Stanisław Witkiewicz in the 1890s. Metal prod­ucts in the col­lec­tion (main­ly­made of cast iron and brass) mostly include door locks with a beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion of Art Nouveau antabs, handles and signs (over 770). The larger cast­ings include fur­naces from the Saxon steel­works of the Ein­siedel family and the steel­works in Nowa Sól, balustrade balus­ters, acro­te­ri­ons, chan­de­liers, eclec­tic and neo gothic doors, neo-Baroque grates and an Art Nouveau gate with the signZum gold­e­nen Anker.

Text by Magda Ławicka

In­ter­war ar­chi­tec­ture (1914-1945)

A col­lec­tion in­ter­war ar­ti­facts was created almost from the be­gin­ning of the Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture within the De­part­ment of Con­tem­po­rary Ar­chi­tec­ture, first el­e­ments of the col­lec­tion were ob­tained in 1967. The time frame of the col­lec­tion was set between the be­gin­ning of World War I and the end of World War II, but it also grad­u­ally in­cluded earlier and later objects. The vast ma­jor­ity of the col­lec­tion con­sists of works from private archives of Polish ar­chi­tects that they or their heirs have donated over decades. The col­lec­tion con­sists mainly of ar­chi­tec­tural designs, draw­ings and models, as well as per­sonal ma­te­ri­als, in­clud­ing doc­u­ments, sketches, pho­tographs, medals and cor­re­spon­dence. Part of the col­lec­tion was pur­chased from in­di­vid­ual col­lec­tors or on the an­ti­quar­ian market. The sys­tem­at­i­cally col­lected group of ar­ti­facts now numbers over 4300 objects, dating from the 1870s to the end of the 20th century.

The most nu­mer­ous group (1170 objects) are the works of Bohdan Lachert, most of which were created in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Józef Szana­jca within an ar­chi­tec­tural company that flour­ished until the tragic death of Szana­jca in Sep­tem­ber 1939. Their artis­tic output in­cludes very diverse designs (in­clud­ing nu­mer­ous com­pe­ti­tion designs) of mod­ernist ar­chi­tec­ture, from sacred build­ings (St Roch Church in Bi­a­lystok), ex­hi­bi­tion pavil­ions (Eternit, Cen­tro-Ce­ment and Bu­down­ictwo pavil­ions at the Polish General Ex­hi­bi­tion in Poznan), office build­ings (Warsaw head­quar­ters of the Air­borne and Antigas Defence League and the Polish Radio), public build­ings (Post and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Office on Targowa Street in Warsaw), health care build­ings (PCK hos­pi­tal in Warsaw, sana­to­ri­ums in Tuszyn and Łagiewniki near Lodz), schools (grammar schools in Ciechanki and Stara Miłosna, Com­mer­cial School complex in Vilnius), nu­mer­ous res­i­den­tial build­ings – both in­di­vid­ual houses for private in­vestors (Olimpia and Antoni Szyller’s house near Wał Miedzeszyński in Warsaw), mul­ti­fam­ily houses (State Pension Funds houses in Solec dis­trict in Warsaw), housing estates (ZUS housing estate in Żoliborz dis­trict in Warsaw) as well as arrange­ment, in­te­rior design, fur­ni­ture or visual iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­jects. Most of them got to the Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture in con­nec­tion with the 1980 ex­hi­bi­tion “Bohdan Lachert, Józef Szana­jca. Ar­chi­tec­ture”, thanks to which Bohdan Lachert donated a large part of his archive to the museum collections.

Bohdan Lachert, Józef Szana­jca, design of the Cen­tro­ce­ment pavil­ion at the Polish General Ex­hi­bi­tion in Poznan, 1928

The second largest col­lec­tion con­sists of works by Jan Koszczyc-Witkiewicz (665 objects) which in­cludes designs of the Warsaw School of Eco­nom­ics, sacred and public build­ings, houses and manor houses, as well as furniture.

Jan Koszczyc-Witkiewicz, design of the Folk Uni­ver­sity in Gacia, 1934

Another sig­nif­i­cant group in the col­lec­tion con­sti­tutes the private archive of Helena and Szymon Syrkus (over 330 objects) that in­cludes designs and pho­to­graphic doc­u­men­ta­tion of the Warsaw Housing Co­op­er­a­tive housing estates in Rakowiec and Koło, man­u­scripts of Helena Syrku­sowa’s book chap­ters, as well as a rich col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments, pho­tographs, per­sonal mem­o­ra­bilia and cor­re­spon­dence, among them par­tic­u­larly valu­able letters written by Szymon Syrkus to Helena from the con­cen­tra­tion camp in Auschwitz.

Michał Tet­ma­jer, oc­cu­pa­tion lau­re­ate for Helena Syrkus with sig­na­tures of her col­lab­o­ra­tors from the con­spir­a­to­r­ial Ar­chi­tec­ture and Urban Plan­ning Lab­o­ra­tory, 1943

The Lviv ar­chi­tec­tural com­mu­nity is also well rep­re­sented in the in­ter­war col­lec­tion, mainly by the works of stu­dents and grad­u­ates of the Faculty of Ar­chi­tec­ture of the Lviv Poly­tech­nic: Czeslaw Bo­ratski, Andrzej Fry­decki, Józef Gałęzowski, Tadeusz Michejda, Andrzej Nitsch, Tadeusz Teodor­ow­icz-Todor­owski and Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska.

Tadeusz Teodor­ow­icz-Todor­owski, design of a mod­ernist house, 1931

The col­lec­tion also in­cludes Romuald Gutta’s early works, designs and archives of Adolf Szyszko-Bo­husz (in­clud­ing his mem­o­ries of the German oc­cu­pa­tion of Wawel and its re­con­struc­tion designs), Władysław Bo­rawski, Maksy­mil­ian Gold­berg, Wacław Krzyzanowski, Stefan Narębski, Jan Zach­wa­tow­icz, and Gebhard Utinger’s artworks.

Adolf Szyszko-Bo­husz, design of a hotel in Krynica, 1928

In ad­di­tion, the col­lec­tion in­cludes in­ven­tory draw­ings of housing estates of the Central In­dus­trial Dis­trict (COP), erected before World War II in Mielec, Stalowa Wola, Rzeszów and Pustków, made in the 1980s at the Rzeszów Uni­ver­sity of Technology.

At the be­gin­ning of the 1990s, the in­ter­war col­lec­tion was ex­panded by the private archive of Hein­rich Lauter­bach, the ini­tia­tor of the Wrocław WuWA ex­hi­bi­tion. The pre­served col­lec­tion of designs, draw­ings and pho­tographs doc­u­ments almost all of his ar­chi­tec­tural ac­tiv­ity until the out­break of World War II and in­cludes such promi­nent ex­am­ples of mod­ernist ar­chi­tec­ture as designs from Wroclaw (ten­e­ment build­ing at 8 Kraszewskiego Street, a housing quarter on Słubicka Street in Szczepin dis­trict, ter­raced and sin­gle-fam­ily houses de­vel­oped at the WuWA ex­hi­bi­tion) and Czecho­slo­va­kia (Jaroslav and Zdeňka Hásek’s and Friedrich Schmelowsky’s houses in Jablonec over Nisou).

House no. 35 at the WuWA ex­hi­bi­tion, de­signed by Hein­rich Lauter­bach, photo by Hein­rich Klette, 1929

The col­lec­tion also in­cludes pho­tographs of Wroclaw ar­chi­tec­ture - ter­raced houses, single- and dou­ble-fam­ily houses de­vel­oped at the WuWA ex­hi­bi­tion and pho­to­graphic re­pro­duc­tions of Max Berg’s pro­jects (e.g. the Cen­ten­nial Hall).

Archival doc­u­ments related to the ar­chi­tects of the in­ter­war period are also avail­able in the library col­lec­tion of the Museum of Ar­chi­tec­ture (texts written by Andrzej Fry­decki, Jan Koszczyc-Witkiewicz, Bohdan Lachert and Helena Syrkus, col­lec­tions of Andrzej Nitsch).