By a decision of the Mazovian Provincial Conservator of Monuments, the unique House of Hanna and Gabriel Rechowicz at 9 Lekarska Street in Warsaw was entered in the register of monuments, thus gaining legal protection. It is not just a building, but a living monument to history, art and social ties, the echoes of which still resound within its walls today. Both the exterior fabric of the building and its interior are a manifesto of the artistic spirit.
As early as the mid-1920s, the idea of building an intimate housing estate with a unique architectural form was born in Warsaw. The “Ognisko” Building and Housing Cooperative, founded in 1923, bought the site between Filtrowa, Topolowa, Wawelska and Lekarska Streets in 1927. The complex was designed by the then head of the Municipal Department of the Ministry of Public Works, architect Roman Felinski – a master of combining functionalism with classicising elegance. Four buildings were constructed by 1929 under his direction (the work was completed by Stefan Kraskowski), in the spirit of the so-called national style, drawing on the traditions of the Polish manor house and the town house.
The modernist vision
In the 1930s, the house located at 9 Lekarska Street belonged to Eng. Marian Ponikiewski – a social and freemason activist, director of ZUS and the Polish branch of the YMCA. His house became a meeting place for intellectual elites and philanthropic initiatives, foreshadowing the later artistic openness of the place. Turbulent history led to significant damage to the building in the mid-1940s. Only the structural wall structure and the ceiling above the basement survived in its entirety.
The reconstruction project, designed by Jan Müller, was approved in 1946. Under the direction of investors Jerzy Gustaw Ponikiewski and Wanda Ponikiewska-Świostkowa, the house was revived just one year later. The interiors were divided into three flats, and the former representative space was also adapted for rent.
Art from the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1953, after returning from artistic studies in France and Sopot, Hanna (née Piotrowska) and Gabriel Rechowicz moved into the house at 9 Lekarska Street. Their private residence became an arena for experiments: as early as the 1960s, a mosaic of stones collected on the Vistula River appeared on the building’s facades, as well as a sienna fresco on the front. They transformed the interiors into a studio and gallery, combining painting with assemblage.
Today, the house of Hanna and Gabriel Rechowicz is the only example in Poland of such an impressive combination of living and artistic space in an integral way. The façades retain traces of the architecture of the “national style”: pilasters, symmetry of the layout of openings, simple cornices. But within their framework, the artists injected modernist abstraction – mosaics of stones joined by cement mortar and surrealist frescoes. This fusion of classical forms with avant-garde decoration testifies to the creative courage of the Rechowiczs. Their oeuvre can also be seen in other realisations in Warsaw, including on the wall of School Complex No. 31, which we described HERE under item No. 10.
The artistic intervention at 9 Lekarska Street, which is a consequence of the abandonment of the renovation of the front elevation as part of the renovation of the building destroyed during the war, is a unique way, on the scale of the city, of taming the ‘wounds of memory’, which were the numerous gunshots on the facades of the buildings in the 1960s, recalling the tragic years of the war, informs the Mazovian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments.
Entry in the register of monuments
The official inclusion of the house at 9 Lekarska Street in the register of monuments is recognition of its historical, architectural and artistic value. Legal protection safeguards both the original structural elements and the unique decorations of the Rechowicz family. Like a great monument, the house is a reminder that culture and memory are inseparable components of the urban fabric.
source, photos: WUOZ in Warsaw
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