The tenement house standing at 3 Miodowa Street in Warsaw is a building with a rich and turbulent history. Built in 1912 on the site of the demolished picturesque house-atelier of Jan Mieczkowski, designed by architects Henryk Stifelman and Stanisław Weiss, it originally had as many as eight storeys. Unfortunately, during the Warsaw Uprising, the building suffered severe damage when around 48% of the structure was destroyed.
After the war, in 1948, demolition work and preparations for reconstruction began. The reconstruction plan was entrusted to architect Bronislaw Iwańczyk. The new design, approved in 1952, involved giving the building a historicising, classicising look, and the whole was lowered to two storeys with an attic. Changes were made to the façade, including reducing the window openings and adding stone frames. The entire project was completed in 1956, and the new form of the building, with four storeys and a steep clay tile roof, won praise from conservationists.
3 Miodowa St. Photo author: Andrzej G/photopolska.eu, License: CC-BY-SA 3.0
The rebuilt tenement has retained many elements from the original structure, including the representative hallway and staircase, which have been enhanced with rich decoration and marble cladding. Modest post-war detailing, such as the stone plinth and bands around the shopfronts, gave the building a unified, historicising form that harmonised with the surrounding architecture.
Miodowa 3 in 1940 and today. Source: National Archive in Warsaw and Google Maps
Reducing the number of storeys was a conscious effort to make the building fit better into the cityscape. Thanks to this, it did not dominate the nearby monuments, such as St. Anne’s Church or the Primate’s Palace, and did not stand out excessively in the panorama visible from the W-Z route.
The basement of the building in 1933 and today. Source: NAC – National Digital Archives www.nac.gov.pl/ and Rado-NDM/photopolska.eu, Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0
In 2020, the Mazovian Provincial Conservator of Monuments decided to put the tenement on the list of monuments, recognising its preserved artistic and scientific values. The tenement at 3 Miodowa Street is an important testimony to the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw, documenting the efforts to protect and restore the former architectural values of the capital.
Source: wiadomosci.onet.pl, tvn24.pl
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