History

Rwańska Street changed its character at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, when a church of the Piarist order was built here, together with a monastery and college buildings. After the dissolution of the Piarist order, their church in Piotrków was given to the Evangelical-Augsburg community. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was occupied by the army. In 1817, it returned to the Evangelists and its interiors were altered to serve the needs of the Lutheran Church. It was then that the community started thinking about the construction of a clergy house. The construction was completed between 1850 and 1855 by priest Leopold Otto.

Originally, the building had two storeys, without the superstructure visible from Rwańska Street. Until the Second World War, there was a one-class, and later a two-class Evangelical school on the ground floor. In the 1990s, the clergy house was again taken over by the Evangelists.

Description

The townhouse is situated in the western frontage of Rwańska Street. Its southern wall adjoins the Evangelical church. The main entrance to the townhouse is from Rwańska Street.

The building has Neoclassical features.

It follows a floor plan of a rectangle and has two bays, with a wider bay at the front. On the axis of the building, there is a hallway accommodating a staircase.

The townhouse is cellared and two-storey and has a habitable attic. It has a three-hipped roof with a wall dormer in the western roof surface. The building is made from ceramic bricks laid with lime and lime-cement mortar. Plastered. Over the cellars, there is a brick barrel vault. Over the other storeys, there are wooden beam ceilings with a soffit. The roof truss is wooden, of a purlin-collar beam structure. The rafters rest on wall plates, two intermediate purlins and a purlin supporting the roof of the balcony. They are braced with collar beams. The roof is covered with bituminous felt on a timber deck. In the cellars and in the staircases, there are concrete and terrazzo floors. In sanitary facilities, there are terracotta floors. In other rooms, the floors are made from wooden planks. The external stairs are concrete at the front and wooden in the yard. The wooden stairs leading to the cellars are supported by the wall. In the storeys above the ground, there are wooden stringer stairs with a balustrade made of wooden balusters. In the western, yard-facing elevation, along the wall of both storeys, there are wooden balconies based on pillars. The balustrades of the balconies are made from decoratively cut planks.

All openings are rectangular with straight-sided heads.

The contemporary, coupled windows mirror the form of the original windows. The windows have two wings, each divided into four sections.

The one- and two-wing doors are frame-panelled, with a fanlight. The jambs are wooden.

The front (eastern) elevation of the townhouse is three-storey (with a habitable attic) and seven-axial. It is set on a high, smoothly plastered, offset plinth. Against its background, the six axes of the cellars are accented by the rectangular, horizontal, decorative panels. On the axis on the ground floor, there is a deep recess with a rectangular entrance door opening, reached from the sidewalk via six-step stairs. The other axes are accented by the rectangular window openings arranged in the rusticated wall. The storey is topped by a smoothly plastered, narrow cornice beam. Above, there are rectangular window openings in the smooth wall, decorated with stuccoed, profiled frames. Under the openings, there is a narrow, smooth beam connecting the window sills. In the wall dormer at the attic level, there are three central window openings. The rectangular windows are topped by a full arch and enclosed with a profiled frame. Under each of them, there is a narrow, rectangular decorative panel, smoothly plastered, as well as a window sill formed by a cornice section. The smoothly plastered wall of the wall dormer is topped by a profiled cornice. Above the outer axes, in the attic part, there are narrow, rectangular, horizontal window openings. Above them, there is a profiled cornice and an eaves which protrudes significantly in front of the elevation.

The western elevation is two-storey and five-axial. The axes are rectangular and vertical. On the axis on each storey, there is a door opening. On the other axes, there are window openings. All of them are arranged against the background of the smoothly plastered wall. In front of the openings of the second storey, there is a wooden balcony, based on four wooden poles, equal in height to the elevation.

Private property. The building can be viewed from outside.

Compiled by Agnieszka Lorenc-Karczewska, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Łódź 1 September 2020

Bibliography

• Gwóźdź E., Record sheet of monuments of architecture and construction, 1997, Voivodeship Monuments Protection Office in Łódź, National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Warsaw,
• Głowacki K., Urbanistyka Piotrkowa Trybunalskiego, Piotrków Trybunalski – Kielce 1984.