The Mazovian Provincial Conservator of Monuments has decided that three wooden workers’ houses will gain new legal protection. The so-called Siarczanki have been entered in the register of immovable monuments of the voivodeship as a valuable example of an old urban planning concept.
Siarczanki are former workers’ houses which are part of the factory housing complex of the chemical factory “Hirschmann, Kijewski and Scholtze”, located at 6 Siarczana Street in Warsaw. Their construction was completed in the 1890s.
The houses were built as part of a campaign to relocate the entire factory. A housing estate was built next to the factory. It consisted of a villa, a brick workers’ house and six, wooden houses for the factory workers. Their residents were able to enjoy large gardens in which they planted vegetables and fruit. Already after 1945, three of the six wooden housing buildings were demolished.
The inclusion in the register of historical monuments is intended to ensure that the buildings are protected and cannot be demolished in the future. The old workers’ houses are the last example of the urban planning concept of “patronal settlements”, which was realised at the end of the 19th century. The idea was that the erection of housing next to the workplaces would make the whole complex more efficient. It eliminated the need to organise commuting and offered great time savings.
As indicated by the Mazovian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments, the buildings (…) “are an example of an architecturally coherent group of buildings, remaining in historically established functional and spatial relations to each other. They are an important source of knowledge on the history of wooden housing and architecture fulfilling an auxiliary and supplementary function for the factory complex,” reads the website mwkz.pl.
photos: K. Pająk, WUOZ in Warsaw
source: Mazovian Voivodeship Historic Preservation Officer mwkz.pl
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