It has retained its original plan, mass, composition and architectural detail.

History of the structure

The building was erected in 1910. In the 1930s, the ground floor underwent renovation. In the interwar period, on the ground floor of the tenement house, there was Engelbert Gold’s well-known department store “Bazar”, where the merchant sold everything for 95 pfennigs each.

The building was not destroyed during World War II. After the war ended, it passed to the State Treasury and functioned as a service building. After 1945, minor renovations and a new division of the interior were made. For many years the building was the seat of the 1st PKO Branch in Opole. The building has been unused for many years - it is currently undergoing modernization.

Description of the structure

The building is located in the downtown of Opole, in its central part, outside the perimeter of the medieval urban layout. It is a corner building located at the intersection of Damrota and Krakowska Streets, set on a “C” letter plan. On the northern side, the building is bordered by the “Domy Centrum” department store, and on the eastern side there is a park.

It is a brick, plastered, four-storey structure with a usable attic, a basement, and a gable roof covered with tiles. The body of the building is distinguished by a three-axial bay window located in the southwestern corner, at the height of the second and third storey, topped with a balustrade. On the side of Damrota Street, the central part of the nine-axis elevation is decorated by a false avant-corps preceded by a second bay window on the building’s elevation. The four-axis rectangular bay, supported by double corbels, extending to the height of the second and third storey, is topped with a balcony with a brick balustrade. The avant-corps is framed by rusticated plaster lesene and the whole is crowned in the roof part by a gable with a concave-convex profile. The western elevation is four-axial with rectangular shop windows in the ground floor. The window openings are rectangular, in the attic part they are topped with a full arch, and the inter-window spaces are filled with vertical strips. The attic is separated from the lower storeys by string course covered with a narrow mono-pitched roof. The tenement house at Damrota Street is an example where the Akerman vault was used for the first time. The modernistic portal from the 1930s has a characteristic frame decorated with grooving, in which a steel grate has been preserved, lowered by means of a crank in steel guides. When the building was converted to commercial premises at the ground level, a new entrance to the banking area was introduced in place of the storefront on the south elevation.

Inside the building, the original staircase with wooden balusters, posts decorated with Art Nouveau ornaments and profiled railings have been preserved. The door frame is also original (panel doors, door frames decorated in the lintel with a triangular pediment with plaques bearing the room number). At the second floor level, one of the rooms also features Art Nouveau stucco. An innovative solution is a load-bearing pole located in the interior at ground level, which supports a cross system of steel beams on which Akerman ceilings are based (over the ground floor and first floor).

Visitor access: The monument is open to visitors from the outside.

Author: Joanna Banik, Katarzyna Latocha, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Opole, 18.07.2018

Bibliography

• Hamada A., Architektura Opola wpisana w dzieje miasta, Opole 2008.
• Studium historyczno-urbanistyczne miasta Opola, Katalog zabytków – Opole Wschód, PKZ Wrocław 1990 [in:] resources of the Voivodeship Heritage Protection Office in Opole.
• Karta ewidencyjna zabytków architektury i budownictwa: budynek banku, ul. Damrota 1 w Opolu, compiled by W. Żurakowski, 2011 [in:] resources of the Voivodeship Heritage Protection Office in Opole.