The edifice is consistent and characteristic in terms of style and completes the urban tissue in an almost organic manner.

History of the site

The Credit Society in Chrzanów was founded in 1882 and housed at Aleja Henryka 22 in 1895. The designer remains unknown. Perhaps, it was the city’s deputy urban planner, Bolesław Chwastowski. As his family tradition has it, he was thought to be the author of “all major buildings [in Chrzanów].” The building exhibiting the style of historicism with elements of neoclassicism has survived to date without significant transformations of the body and function. Today, it is the seat of the Cooperative Bank.

Site description

The building of the former Credit Society lines the west side of the 19th-century development in Aleja Henryka, south-west from the city market. Today’s Cooperative Bank was built on a rectangular plan as a one-level building with an attic and partial basement on the west. The outer walls are brick; the façade is plastered; the front plinth area is covered with stone. The compact body of the building is covered with a gable roof of galvanised sheets. The eastern front façade has an eleven-axis, single-level design with a separate plinth zone. The extreme south axis and the penultimate from the north have entrances preceded by porches and stone-faced steps, flanked with stone railings with balusters. The windows are enclosed with neo-Baroque ear-shaped frames; an entablature zone ends with a crowning cornice. Above the cornice, there is a rectangular attic stretching across the entire façade (without the north axis) with the symmetrically arranged inscription, “TOWARZYSTWO ZALICZKOWE.” Above, in the middle of the gable, there is a round cartouche bearing the date of 1895. The south façade is two-level with asymmetrically arranged window openings and a triangularly topped pedestal zone. The north façade is a smooth wall with a triangular top. The courtyard west façade is a single-level, twelve-axis, asymmetrical design with a separate plinth zone. The interiors reveal a corridor system and a two-bay layout. The internal, double-leaf, paneled door joinery has largely survived along with the wooden trims topped with entablature sections.

The site is open to visitors.

Author of the note Tomasz Woźniak, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Kraków 07-12-2015

Bibliography

• Decyzja nr(st. rej. Nr A- 1422/90 [A-694/M]z dn. 20-12-1990 r., w sprawie wpisania dobra kultury do rejestru zabytków nieruchomych województwa katowickiego, archiwum MWKZ Kraków
• Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce, vol. I, Województwo krakowskie, no. 4, Powiat chrzanowski, Warszawa 1952
• Krasnowolski B., Leksykon zabytków architektury Małopolski, Warszawa 2013
• Krasnowolski B., Zabytki i wartości kulturowe, [in:] Muzeum w Chrzanowie (ed.), Chrzanów, Studia z dziejów miasta, vol. 2, Chrzanów współczesny, part 1, Chrzanów 1999