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Feniks House - Zabytek.pl

Feniks House


tenement house 1928 Kraków

Address
Kraków, Rynek Główny 41

Location
woj. małopolskie, pow. Kraków, gm. Kraków

A modernist building, one of the most controversial in Kraków’s main square.

History

The Feniks House was erected on a plot reclaimed by demolishing three mediaeval tenement houses. From the side of the market square, they were, Tryblowska house (14th century) and Fridrichszmalcowska house (13th/14th century). At the end of the 16th century, the Tryblowska house belonged to Jan Tenendus, the bookseller serving King Stephen Bathory. The name of the other one comes from the first and last name of the patrician Fridrich Schmatz, who acquired it in 1601. In 1837 an educational establishment was set up in the houses, one of the few private high schools in Kraków. Before their demolition in 1875, the owner had commissioned their merger. As a result, a uniform, three-storey building was obtained with a neo-Renaissance façade. The third house (from ul. św. Jana), which shared the fate of the other two, was the Ważyński house (15th/16th century), owned for years by the Bernardines.

The buildings were demolished in 1913 and 1914 by Tadeusz Będzikiewicz who planned to use the plot to erect a modern hotel. The idea aroused much controversy, and the period of the Great War and the post-war economic crisis proved not the best time to invest. The investor only managed to lay the foundations. The construction site was hidden behind a wooden fence, which soon became a notice board for displaying or painting political messages. The idea of the hotel failed, and the plot was purchased by the Viennese Feniks Insurance Company, which intended to build a residential building. How to develop such a prominent location was a question of heated debate. Many projects were proposed, and finally, in the years 1928-1932, Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz’s vision prevailed.

In the interwar period, the locals called the building “the House under the Chimneys” because of the high attic topped with pinnacles. It corresponded to the lower storeys as if creating their mirror image. The external façades of the six-storey building were divided into three zones separated by cornices. From the first to the fourth floor, the designed proposed a five-axis façade from the side of the market square and a twelve-axis façade from ul. św. Jana, based on the rhythm of trapezoidal bay windows. It was a controversial building, although very modern in its time. It was air-conditioned, with aluminium window frames, with the first neon sign in Kraków, and even garbage chutes. Before and after WW2, the building was the seat of the Orbis travel agency and of a popular dancing club on the first floor (from 1933). In 1996 the Feniks building underwent major renovation. The corner emblem of the house, removed by the Germans during WW2, was restored: the aluminium sculpture of Feliciana by Karol Muszkiet from 1934. The laurel wreath that she holds reminds the Kraków citizens of something else. The sculpture was quickly nicknamed “a woman with artificial teeth.”

Description

A five-storey building with a habitable attic and a mansard roof. It has a practical reinforced concrete structure: floor slabs supported on pillars. This modernist building, due to its appearance and size, does not seem to correspond to all other development at the main market square. During WW2, the modernist front façade, as an example of “degenerated architecture,” was rebuilt in the classicist style. The Germans altered the attic from the side of the market square to accommodate a mansard roof (designed by Georg Stahl). On the façade, they used pilasters, which made the building blend with the other adjacent houses. Only a fragment of the wing from ul. św. Jana retained the original, functionalist form. The original décor of the Piasecki confectionery store on the ground floor attracts particular attention, as well as the Rio Cafe with the original decoration from the 1950s.

The site is partly available: freely from the outside but inside only during the working hours of the stores and institutions.

Author of the note Roman Marcinek, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Kraków 20/04/2016

Bibliography

  • Dyba O., Kraków. Zabytki architektury i budownictwa, Warszawa 2007
  • Encyklopedia Krakowa, Warszawa – Kraków 2000.
  • Fabiański M., Purchla J., Historia architektury Krakowa w zarysie, Kraków 2001
  • Komorowski W., Sudacka A., Rynek Główny w Krakowie, Ossolineum 2008
  • Rożek M., Przewodnik po zabytkach i kulturze Krakowa, Kraków 1993
  • Marcinek R., Kraków, Kraków 2001

Category: tenement house

Architecture: Modernism

Building material:  concrete

Protection: Register of monuments, Monuments records

Inspire id: PL.1.9.ZIPOZ.NID_N_12_BK.194351, PL.1.9.ZIPOZ.NID_E_12_BK.426335