History

According to the tradition, the tenement house was falsely held as a seat of the St Lazarus hospital. The originally wooden building occupied a plot that was longer than at present. It is known that in the late 16th century it belonged to a councillor and goldsmith Walenty Korwin. From 1618 it belonged to his son-in-law, Stanisław Czarnocki, and after 1620 to a royal butler, Feliks Pacanowski. In the second half of the 17th century the municipality leased the house to, among others, tailors Andrzej Burza and later - Tomasz Żuczkiewicz. On 9 June 1669 it burned down in the fire of Warsaw. In the years 1670-1671 the estate was donated to the Brotherhood of Mercy running the St Lazarus hospital, as a repayment of a loan granted to the municipality in 1656 and after repaying another creditor, Jan Andryszkiewicz. The tenement house was reconstructed at that time as partially made of brick. It was intended as financial security of the chaplain of the Brotherhood, therefore it was released from an obligation to accommodate visitors. In 1728 it was remodelled from the funds of a deputy cup-bearer of Podole, Władysław Wawrzyniec Juszyński, as noted on a non-surviving plaque. The brick house had a three-storey silhouette with a three-axial façade on the side of Piwna Street and a ten-axial façade on the side of Wąski Dunaj Street. In 1768 it was subject to renovation. In 1825 it was still listed as the property of the hospital, but in 1844 it belonged to the Śliwiński family, followed by the Kuczyński and Siemiatycz families. Before 1872 the building was altered. Among others, a fourth storey was added and the façade on the side of Piwna Street was replaced with a two-axial one. A relief showing a figure of Lazarus from the New Testament parable, with dogs licking its wounds, was removed as well. In 1928 the façade was renovated. The photos from 1942 present the feature as a building with 4 storeys, covered with a flat roof, with simple façades: nine-axial on the side of Wąski Dunaj Street and two-axial on the side of Piwna Street, with rectangular window and door openings and with detailing limited to a crowning cornice and a distinctively chamfered corner. Similarly as the majority of the buildings in the Old Town, the tenement house was destroyed in 1944 as a result of acts of war. Only the basement and the façade up to the cornice survived. The latter was demolished prior to the reconstruction carried out in the years 1949-1955 according to the design of Jerzy Gajewski and Włodzimierz Wapiński. Being inspired in terms of style by the architecture of the Old Town from the past, the architects adapted the design to the standards of a newly erected residential district. The number of storeys of the building and the number of façade axes were preserved, thus masking the new interior partitions. In 1954 a group of artists supervised by Edmund Burke performed a decoration of the façade using the sgraffito technique and polychrome by means of wet fresco. Ever-present shortage of materials during the postwar reconstruction as well as the pace of works imposed by the authorities were reflected in the quality. The dilapidating layers of plaster were subject to renovation multiple times and required numerous supplementations. The works carried out in 2016 restored an aesthetic appearance of formerly highly damaged façades.

Description

The corner tenement house is located in a cluster of compact development of the south frontage of Wąski Dunaj Street and the west frontage of Piwna Street. It is made of brick, has four floors, includes preserved basements and is covered with a three-sided roof. The steep roof clad in roof tiles features a usable attic illuminated from the side of the streets by dormers and an elongated dormer window. From the courtyard, the roof plane is shorter and covers the fifth storey. The tenement house was designed on an elongated rectangular floor plan. After the postwar reconstruction, some rooms were linked with the neighbouring building on Piwna Street, while on the side of Wąski Dunaj Street, a separate building no. 3 was singled out. Particular parts of the façade share a crowning cornice. A narrow façade on the side of Piwna Street (the former front façade) gained two axes of windows on all storeys after the reconstruction. The longer façade with 9 axes of residential storeys was partitioned by an asymmetrically three-axial avant-corps. On the parterre, hosting shops and an entrance to the staircase, an inclined wall of the avant-corps, separated by a cornice, imitates a buttress. Two door portals located on its sides are crowned with a full arch and framed by stone surrounds (one rusticated and including a sphere in the finial). On the ground floor of the building at 3 Wąski Dunaj Street, the rectangular portal is linked with a shop window by a shared surround. The parterre windows, outside the avant-corps, are framed by stone surrounds, while those on upper storeys feature plastered surrounds in the form of chambranles, with cornices under window sills on the first and second floor. The windows of the first floor of the avant-corps are additionally crowned with above cornices. A decoratively terminated chamfering of the lower part of the corner was restored during the reconstruction. The façades on the sides of the streets are embellished with sgraffito ornamentation. The longer one, seen from a far perspective of Szeroki Dunaj Street, gained lavish painted decoration, the topic of which intended to refer to the former trading function of this street. It includes figurative scenes presenting tradeswomen and decorative elements featuring motifs of animals, flowers, fruit and cornucopias. A narrow strip of the façade, with three axes and a single window on the parterre and the fifth storey separated by a pronounced cornice, can be seen from the courtyard.

The structure can be viewed from the outside.

Compiled by Małgorzata Laskowska-Adamowicz, National Institute of Cultural Heritage, Regional Branch in Warsaw. 28.06.2017

Bibliography

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