History

The Management Board of the Land Credit Society, representing interests of nobility, in order to build an office in Kielce, purchased, in 1843, part of the square at Leonarda Street, separated from the former Daleszczyzna manor farm. The plan of the building constructed in the 40s of the 19th century was similar to the current one, with an outbuilding wing from the yard, located along the western border of the land plot. The office was soon considered not representative enough. As a result, in 1884, on the same plot and within the same frontage, a more impressive building for the Society was erected (currently the bank at 2 Św. Leonarda Street). The older building, along with a separated part of the land plot, was bought by Moszek and Perla Miński. As of ca. 1886, the building was owned by a wealthy notary public, Mieczysław Halik, with his wife.  He lived at the same street, in a tenement at the present number 6, adjoining the older office of the LCS, which he sold, in the 1880s, to the Majzel family. It was probably Halik who converted the building into a residential tenement, inter alia by adding a staircase avant-corps from the yard. The front façade received lavish stone and stucco decoration, partially from ready-made castings (the same solution was applied in 1900 to  the front façade of the "Bristol" hotel in Kielce). From 1913, some of the rooms in the notary public's house were leased out by the Polish Sightseeing Society that used them for its museum. In the inter-war period, the estate belonged to a wealthy Jewish family, Mincbergs. Icek Mincberg survived the Holocaust and donated the building to the state. After the World War II, the building housed a medical library and a medical equipment repair workshop. The structure, which had been neglected and used for years, was in a bad technical condition. The commune of Kielce, after obtaining the ownership title to the building, carried out, in years 2005-2006, its renovation and adaptation for the purposes of the Museum of the History of Kielce.

Description

The building is located in the western part of Kielce on the outskirts of the city centre. It forms the end part of a densely urbanised section of the northern frontage of Św. Leonarda Street. On its eastern side, there is a driveway to a rectangular yard at the back.The front building is connected with a wing of narrow outbuilding set peripherally along the western part of the land plot. Both two-storey buildings are made of stone and brick. The front house is cuboid in shape, covered with a gable roof, with a gable on the east. The building faces the street frontage with the roof ridge and features a front façade with lavish architectural and stucco decoration, dominated by densely applied Antique motifs: meander friezes, acroterions, Ionic pilasters and acanthus, rich corbels supporting balconies. The monotony of the front façade, regularly pierced by rectangular windows on eleven axes, is enlivened by shallow avant-corps introduced on three-axial ending sections, framed with Ionic pilaster arranged in the giant order and topped with triangular pediments. The arcaded main entrance to the building is located in the middle of a rusticated ground floor. In front of it, there is an aedicula with Ionic columns adjoining the façade and covered with a triangular gable decorated with acroterions. The interior layout in the front building on both storeys is of two-bay type, with rooms arranged in an enfilade. Only under the middle section of the structure a little basement was preserved, covered with a barrel segmental vault.

The interiors are accessible to visitors during the museum opening hours.

Compiled by Anna Adamczyk, 20.12.2014.

Bibliography

• Adamczyk J. L., Wróbel T., Portrety zabytków Kielc, Kielce 2004, pp. 38.
• Główka J., Muzeum historii Kielc  - adaptacja XIX-wiecznego budynku dla potrzeb muzeum, [in:] „Renowacje i Zabytki”, no 4, 2012 , pp. 77.