The writer lived and worked there until his death. The appearance of the building resembling of a palace, located on a land property near Warsaw, was visited by a broad group of artists, especially prominent writers and musicians. During World War II many of them found shelter there. Currently, it hosts a museum devoted to the writer and his wife.

History

The house was built on a 35-hectare estate separated in 1925 from the property of Stanisław Wilhelm Lilpop for his daughter Anna, married to Jarosław Leon Iwaszkiewicz. As a result of the subdivision of the suburban property of the industrial tycoon, a garden-town Podkowa Leśna was developed in the neighbourhood, at the Electric Commuter Railway line. The Iwaszkiewicz family planned to hire Karol Stryjeński to design their house, as he had already authored a gardener’s house within their property. However, the house was designed by architect Stanisław Gądzikiewicz in the years 1927-1928, built by a constructor named Hichl and funded by Stanisław Lilpop. Around the house there was an agricultural holding with usable and decorative parts, also including a fish pond. The writer named the property Stawisko out of affection he had to the Ukrainian estate Stawiszcze belonging to the Branicki family, where he had worked as a tutor. The writer’s house constituted an important centre of cultural and artistic life. The building survived World War II without damage. For some time the German troops were stationing there and two generals were lodged. During the occupation and after the downfall of the uprising, due to the fact that the house was registered as a boarding house and the holding as a horticultural plant, the estate was a centre of conspiracy and shelter for numerous persons, including prominent artists, but also Jews rescued from the Holocaust. Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, for many years acting as the president of the Polish Writers’ Union or Member of the Parliament of the People’s Republic of Poland, lived in the house in Stawisko with his family until his death in 1980. The building’s appearance has not seen many modifications. A visible interference in its original body was a replacement of an eyebrow window in the western plane of the roof with a dormer, seen on the photos from 1967. The area surrounding the building was gradually subdivided after the fragment with a water system was sectioned off by a road from Warsaw to Skierniewice in the 1960s. After the death of the Iwaszkiewicz couple, by the writer’s will, Stawisko without the utility buildings became property of the Ministry of Culture and Art, with an aim of establishing a museum. The institution was opened in 1984 and in 2011 it was modernised.

Description

The house is located within an 18-hectare property in Podkowa Leśna. It stands on a small elevation of land, visibly sloping southwards. The building is located in the area covered to a great degree with a forest park. An alley planted with spruces and, closer to the house, lime trees leads from the north gate through the oval porte-cochère to the building. The architecture of the building is inspired by the manor style with strong references to Classicism. The building is made of brick and plastered, with a plinth and façades decorated by fieldstones. It was built on an L-shaped floor plan, with projections on the front and east side façades. The building features a basement, has two storeys and an attic. It is covered with a hip roof clad in roof tiles and features eyebrow windows at the front and dormers on the west and south sides. A pronounced projection on the east side and the south wing of the building are topped with gable roofs with a pediment. The nine-axial front façade facing the north is distinguished by a three-axial central avant-corps, crowned with a triangular pediment with Iwaszkiewicz’s coat of arms “Trąba” positioned in the central part of the tympanum. The avant-corps is preceded by a porch with stairs on three sides and four Tuscan columns supporting the balcony on the first floor with a baluster. The avant-corps is also distinctive for its interesting form of window and door openings. Two oval windows on the ground floor frame the door portal with a basket arch on the sides, while on the first floor a group of three windows imitates a thermal opening with its shape. Other windows in the building are rectangular, except for those in attic gables, crowned with a semi-circular arch in the wings and with a segmental arch in the avant-corps. All rectangular windows have simple window cornices and parapets clad in roof tiles, while those on the ground floor are adorned with upper small roofs resting on cuboidal corbels. A wooden, roofed veranda, supporting the terrace on the first floor and laid on a tall stone foundation, adjoins the rear façade. Two flights of stairs are added on its extremes. The façades under the projecting eaves are circumscribed by a simple cornice interrupted by a window in the eastern avant-corps. The interior of the building has a two-bay arrangement, on the axis with a hall featuring stairs leading to the upper floor. The museum display presents the interior equipment, personal objects, an archive and library of the writer as well as a collection of paintings from the 19th and 20th century.

The building is accessible during the opening hours of the Museum.

Compiled by Małgorzata Laskowska-Adamowicz, National Institute of Cultural Heritage, Regional Branch in Warsaw. 16-10-2017 

Bibliography

• Record sheet, Dom, Stawisko, 1967, Archive of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Warsaw;
• Grątkowski G., Architektura Podkowy Leśnej, Podkowa Leśna 2007
• Jaroszewski T. S., Po pałacach i dworach Mazowsza przewodnik, part I, Warsaw 1997
• Libicki P., Libicki M., Dwory i pałace wiejskie na Mazowszu, Poznań, 2009,
• Nowicka B., Dzieje Stawiska, [in]: Podkowa Leśna i Stawisko Szkice z dziejów, Podkowa Leśna 2000, p. 63-107
• “Rocznik Podkowiański”, no. 1, Podkowa Leśna 1986
• Żabicki J., Leksykon zabytków architektury Mazowsza i Podlasia, Warsaw 2010
• http://www.stawisko.pl – accessed 11-10-2017