The town hall tower with its Baroque cupola remains an example of how various forms typical for ecclesiastical architecture could be transposed to a secular context, with the tower itself remaining a dominant architectural feature in the town’s skyline. Despite the passage of time, the building retains its original architectural form, including the fully preserved half-timbered wall structure.

History

The building was erected in 1697, replacing an earlier, Gothic town hall which was lost to the blaze in 1692 when a devastating fire swept across the town. The very first mentions of a town hall in Nowe Warpno date back to the year 1556. The new town hall was subsequently restored in years 1885 and 1894, with the scope of renovation works extending both to its interiors and façade. In the early 20th century, a half-timbered fire station was erected alongside the eastern section of the town hall; the fire station building and the town hall remained connected by means of an internal passage. After 1945, the building served the needs of the Municipal National Council; after 1948, however, it was abandoned for a decade due to its poor technical condition. Following its restoration in the 1960s, the building once again began to serve as office space for the local government authorities. In 2011, the town hall underwent a series of comprehensive renovation and conservation works; in 2012, it received the “Well-Preserved Historical Monument” award from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Description

Town hall is located in the north-western part of town, in the middle of a small market square currently known as Victory Square (Plac Zwycięstwa), on the axis of the surrounding urban complex. Its architectural form, its general outline with dominant tower as well as the design of its timber frame are all reminiscent of the ecclesiastical architecture of the Baroque period. The building was erected on a rectangular floor plan, its dimensions being 17.7 x 8.8 metres; the new building was constructed on the old, medieval foundations made of brick and stone. The town hall faces the south-west. The tower, designed on a square plan, forms part of the building’s north-western gable, projecting partially beyond its outline. The length of each side of the tower amounts to 3.2 metres. A 20th-century fire station, currently serving as the administrative section of the municipal office, adjoins the north-eastern wall of the town hall. The town hall was designed as a two-storey building with a basement, covered with a gable roof. The four-storey tower is crowned with a Baroque cupola with an octagonal lantern and a tall spire. The former fire station consists of two distinct sections - a single-storey one and a two-storey one. Both are covered with gable roofs. The fire station also features a wall dormer as well as a steeple jutting from its roof ridge. The peripheral walls feature a half-timbered structure with brick infills, their surface covered with plaster; the original timber framing of the ground floor section of the former fire station has been replaced with a ceramic brick structure. The building’s timber frame is made of oakwood and forms a regular, decorative pattern of intersecting posts and beams. The posts are positioned in a regular arrangement, their bottom sections embedded in the sill plate below; they are interconnected by two layers of horizontal beams running alongside the top of each storey and bound together with top plates. The gables feature an additional decorative flourish in the form of diagonal braces. The building features the surviving period roof truss of the rafter-and-collar type, supported by a double queen post system with diagonally positioned posts. The tower cupola is based on a structure consisting of eight vertical posts bound together by braces and straining beams. The former fire station features a roof truss based on the use of rafters and straining beams. The roofs of the town hall and the former fire station are all clad with beaver-tail roof tiles forming a “lace” pattern. The tower cupola is clad with slate and sheet metal. The original window and door joinery has been replaced with modern items designed to imitate the original shapes and divisions. The façades of the town hall retain their original design and appearance, based on the aesthetic appeal stemming from the arrangement and colour scheme of the building’s timber frame, accentuated by the slender shape of the tower adjoining the town hall’s gable end as well as by the decorative arrangement of the beams in the eastern gable. The front façade follows an asymmetrical, four-axial layout, while the gable-end façades feature a two- and three-axial layout respectively, with irregular divisions. The interior follows a two-bay layout; a spacious vestibule with staircase is positioned on the axis of the front entrance, while a large council hall can be found in the south-eastern part of the building. The tower still features the original tower clock, its mechanism manufactured in 1922 by Turmuhren -Fabrik Georg Richter (Berlin). On the basement level, the brick walls which had once formed part of the now-vanished, Gothic town hall have been left deliberately exposed.

The building is under the administration of the local government. It can be viewed from the outside.

compiled by Waldemar Witek, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Szczecin, 10-07-2015.

Bibliography

• Makowska B., Ratusz w Nowym Warpnie - komunikat o stanie zabytku. [in:] IV Polsko-Niemiecka Konferencja Architektura Ryglowa - wspólne dziedzictwo, M. Opęchowski (ed.), Szczecin 2003, pp. 175-179.
• Łopuch W., Nowe Warpno i okolice, Szczecin 2010.