It has become a social and political symbol due to its association with Józef Piłsudski, an independence activist, soldier, leader, politician, outstanding statesman and one of the founding fathers of the Polish independence. It was in this very building that decisions of key importance for the history of Poland were made. It was here that Józef Piłsudski hosted distinguished persons of his era. 

A small Milusin villa was designed by an architect Kazimierz Skórewicz in a manor house style that was fashionable in the interwar period. The selection of style could not have been incidental. A characteristic body of a Polish manor house became an embodiment of the national style in the first quarter of the 20th century and was a symbolic aspect for the country restoring itself after years of partition. 

Apart from special historical and scientific values, the authenticity of Milusin is definitely its strong point. Both the Milusin villa and the “Drewniak” house have remained virtually unchanged. The villa has preserved its spatial layout, the entire window and door joinery, including fittings and glass. Original parquetry and floors have survived together with modest architectural decorations with crown moulding and fireplaces, or even such bits and pieces as porcelain light switches. Apart from that, after many years the original pieces of furniture and objects that constituted the equipment of the villa during the Marshal’s life were brought back to the house after being scattered around numerous venues after the war. The renovation of the area surrounding the buildings, carried out in the recent years, allowed recreating the form and function of particular parts of the complex.

History

Sulejówek used to be a tiny village surrounded by forests. In 1910 a railway station “Sulejówek” was opened. Convenient connection to the capital city as well as landscape features of the vicinity made Sulejówek an attractive summer resort in the interwar period. 

The current Milusin complex owes its beginnings to Aleksandra Piłsudska, who reacted to the encouraging words of Jędrzej Moraczewski - the Deputy Marshal of the Sejm who had already lived in Sulejówek for some time - by purchasing a wooded plot with a small wooden summer house in 1921. At that time, various milieus around the country put forward an initiative to honour the Marshal’s merits in the fight for regaining independence by donating him an estate near Warsaw. The initiative was brought to life by the Polish Soldier’s Committee, which raised funds for the construction of a villa on the plot belonging to the Piłsudski family. Soldiers also participated in building the house for the Marshal. The Committee dealt with equipping the house, whereby some pieces of equipment, paintings and decorative objects were donated. The house was not even completed when, following a dispute with general Władysław Sikorski concerning the organisational form of the most important military authorities, on 30 May 1923 Piłsudski resigned from the position of the Chief of Staff and moved to Sulejówek, thus withdrawing from the public life. For three years Milusin became his family home, place where he worked and hosted former subordinates. It was there he wrote such books as “My First Battles”, “The Year 1920”, “On the Value of the Polish Legions Soldiers”, “The Year 1863”, and “Memories of Gabriel Narutowicz.” Numerous politicians and private individuals visited Milusin in that period. After Piłsudski returned to political activity, he and his family moved to Belweder, while Sulejówek remained a place for summer and holiday recreation, also after Piłsudski’s death in 1935. 

In September 1939 Aleksandra Piłsudska emigrated with her daughters to London. During the occupation the manor house and its surroundings were seized by the Germans, while in 1947 the villa was taken over by the Polish Army, later to take Piłsudski’s memorabilia away. Until 1956 the manor house was at the disposal of the Ambassador of the USSR, while afterwards it was taken over by the commune and transformed into a kindergarten. 

In 2000 the Sulejówek Town Council handed over the “Milusin Villa” to the Józef Piłsudski’s Family Foundation, while on 10 November 2008 the Minister of Culture and National Heritage concluded an agreement with the Foundation to establish the Józef Piłsudski’s Museum in Sulejówek. 

In 2014 items taken away by the Army in 1947 were found among other things in a resort of the Ministry of National Defence in Hellenów. By decision of the then Minister of Defence, they were returned to the Foundation. The items include, among others, furniture bought in 1923 from the funds of the Soldier Donation Committee. Two urban landscape paintings from Vilnius by Ignacy Pinkas, a painting by Kazimierz Stabrowski “A Pond in the Park”, a sculpture “Shaman” by Stabrowski’s wife - Julia, and other decorative pieces also found their way back to the museum. The museum also acquired an original act of handing Milusin over to Piłsudski.

Description

The Milusin manor house (1922 – 1923) is a brick, single-storey building erected on a rectangular floor plan, with cellars underneath parts of its structure and crowned with a hip roof with ceramic cladding, with two-storey wall dormers in the northern and southern planes and three dormers in the garden plane. The front of the building faces the east, while the main entrance is preceded by a columned porch with a triangular pediment. In the western, garden side, there is an exit to the terrace, while from the south there is a semi-circular columned porch supporting a balcony on the first floor. The façades (five-axial eastern and four-axial western ones) are white and smoothly plastered; window and door openings are rectangular, without surrounds.

The interior has a double-suite layout and features three partitions. In the eastern bay, in the middle, there is an entrance hall with a wooden anteroom wall; on the left there are, among others, wooden winder stairs with a faux baluster leading to the second storey and the attic; next to them, there is a passage to the corner room. On the right side of the hall there is a passage to a narrow utility corridor with a separate entrance and an external porch. A corner kitchen and an adjacent servants’ room are accessible from the corridor. A drawing room located in the western, garden-side suite of rooms, is accessible from the hall, straight ahead. This is the most spacious room in the manor house. It provides access to corner rooms: a dining room to the right, an office to the left. Attic rooms, accessible from a small corridor at the end of the flight of stairs, have partially slanted ceilings.

The drawing room, available from the hall through dual-wing, panel and partially glazed door, distinguishes itself through detailing. It has a rectangular floor plan with rounded corners that feature niches with shell-like vaults. One of the niches hosts a round heating stove. In the niches on the western side there are panel doors to neighbouring rooms. In the western wall there is a pair of glazed garden doors separated by a column, while between the niches of the northern wall there is a fireplace at the wall with rounded jambs. 

All rooms feature crown moulding on ceilings and ash parquetry on the floors. Plank floors are found in corridors, kitchen and utility rooms. Doors and windows are made of wood and include metal fittings. Panel doors are full, while windows are of a two-wing type with small quarters.

Two marble plaques were installed on the walls. They bear the following inscriptions: “For the first Marshal of Poland, Józef Piłsudski, the Commander-in-Chief, this house was erected by soldiers of independent Poland in 1923” and “Let the sun of the free, reborn fatherland gleefully shed its beams on the walls of this house and the life of the beloved Commander for the rest of his long life as a hero.”

The “Drewniak” house (early 20th century) represents a type of a wooden summer house in the “Świdermajer” style, popular at the turn of the century. The style of these buildings, inspired by the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition in Warsaw of 1885, features elements of traditional Mazovian architecture, with a light structure and lavishly decorated pavilions resembling Swiss mountain chalets and Russian dachas. 

“Drewniak” is a single-storey building on a rectangular floor plan, covered with a gable roof with dormer windows partially illuminating the residential attic. The entrance, south-western façade is a seven-axial one with a door in the middle, shielded by a small roof with wooden supports. The back façade is articulated analogically, although without a door. Narrower, two-storey verandas that were initially fully glazed, adjoin the windowless, shorter side façades. Wooden windows with a three-panel partition typical for the period in which they were erected, are secured by two-wing, panel shutters. For many years, as the house was administered by the municipal housing authority, it was used as a multi-family residential house. It led to a partial modification of the layout of internal walls, but door and window joinery has survived. The external appearance of the building also changed, as it was covered with an insulating layer and a thick plaster coating for the purpose of thermal insulation. The glazed verandas were also partially walled up. However, these changes are completely reversible, since - as shown by the studies - original wooden formwork together with remnants of wooden fretwork ornamental decoration were exposed from under the insulating layer.

The garden (early 20th century) has fully preserved its initial character of a pine forest with separated vegetable and fruit quarters, an apiary, a composed garden at the rear elevation of the manor house - all of these have been recreated in detail, including plant species. Separation of a parcel to erect a modern museum pavilion has not triggered a change in the character of the remaining part of the complex.