The so-called Square of Five Corners was one of Warsaw’s most vibrant places before 1939. The bifurcation of Zgoda, Szpitalna and Chmielna Streets gathered crowds of pedestrians, vehicles, numerous shops, cafés and department stores. At its heart was the corner tenement, which for decades was a symbol of the capital’s dynamism and development.
The tenement was built between 1878 and 1880 to a design by Franciszek Brauman. It was originally a two-storey building in the Neo-Renaissance style, enriched with a mansard roof, under which the painter Aleksander Gierymski had his studio for a while. In 1900, the new owners, the Gronowski couple, carried out reconstruction, adding further storeys.
The square and the tenement house in 1933. Source: Museum of Warsaw
A characteristic feature of the tenement was its two longer façades at Zgoda and Szpitalna Streets and the shorter façade at Chmielna Street and the so-called Pięciu Rogów Square. For years, the ground floor of the building was bustling with life, not least because of the iconic Swiss pastry shop, opened in 1906 by Karl Briesemeister. Also known as the “patisserie at the Five Corners,” the premises were a favourite with Varsovians, including journalists from the editorial offices located on the upper floors of the building, such as “Le Messager Polonais”, “Gazeta Polska” and “Dzień Polski”.
The corner building and square in 1925 and 2024. Source: Digital National Library Polona and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski
The tenement was also an excellent advertising space. In 1928, a large illuminated Chevrolet advertisement was mounted on its roof, and in 1936, a neon sign for “Cognac Montbel Marteau,” which depicted an animated bottle emptying into a glass. In September 1939, the townhouse was severely damaged during the bombing of the capital. The last floors collapsed and the interiors, including the patisserie, burned down. During the occupation, the building was demolished to the height of the second floor and then its remains were removed completely.
The tenement in March 1939 and the same place today. Source: State Archive in Warsaw and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski
In 1961, a modern, eleven-storey guesthouse building, “Zgoda,” designed by Zygmunt Stępiński and Andrzej Ilecki, stood in place of the former tenement. It was distinguished by its light, white façade with 45 cubic balconies, which fitted perfectly into the architectural sequence of Chmielna Street. The ground floor of the building harked back to its pre-war history – the Swiss patisserie returned here, converted into a coffee bar. The guesthouse offered 69 residential units, and the centrally located staircases and high-speed lifts provided modern functionality.
The so-called Five Corners Square before and after the recent modernisation. Photo by Adrian Grycuk, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL, via Wikimedia Commons and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski
The “Zgoda” guesthouse remains to this day an important architectural element of the so-called Five Corners Square. Its aesthetically pleasing façade acts as a backdrop, not dominating its surroundings but blending harmoniously into the urban landscape. Although the development of the mezzanine floor by the Sphinx restaurant has affected the lightness of the volume, the building is still an example of the well thought-out, modern architecture of the 1960s.
During the recent renovation of the square, the former course of the walls of the defunct building was marked on the floor, thus commemorating one of the most recognisable and iconic buildings of the pre-war Downtown.
Source: miastarytm.pl, cargocollective.com
Read also: Architecture | Tenement houses | Modernism | City | Warsaw | Architecture in Poland
