The tenement house at 3 Maria Konopnicka Street is an outstanding example of luxury residential architecture in Warsaw of the late 1930s. The building, especially the original, fully preserved staircase in the style of luxurious functionalism, became the setting for a 2015 TV series about the famous pre-war actor Eugeniusz Bodo
Maria Konopnicka Street was in the late 1920s a newly laid out block of F. Nulla Street. The Great Depression halted investment in the very attractive plots of land along it. However, by the end of the 1930s, the street, which ran close to the Sejm (Parliament) and the landed gentry villas on the Vistula escarpment, began to be filled with luxury houses inhabited by wealthy companies and wealthy owners
photo: whiteMAD editors/ Mateusz Markowski
The tenement house at No. 3 was designed for the Steinhagen and Saenger SA company (paper and pulp factory) by the architect duo Jerzy Gelbard and Roman Sigalin, who jointly ran an architectural office in the interwar period and were the authors of a series of luxury townhouses. The building was completed in 1937. The façade of the modernist four-storey townhouse, with two bay windows (a characteristic feature of this partnership of architects) and a centrally located gate, was finished with a cladding of Szydłowiec sandstone. The house, in the style of luxury functionalism, housed four- and five-room flats, accessed by an elegant staircase and lift. The men were often inspired by the architecture of Paris in their designs, which is why the buildings they created earned the nickname ‘Parisian’. Both died during the war – Gelbardar at Majdanek, Sigalin at Katyn. We wrote about another very similar building by the famous duo HERE
photo: whiteMAD editors/ Mateusz Markowski
During the Warsaw Uprising, the house found itself in an area of heavy fighting. The façade of the building suffered badly from shelling. The sandstone slabs were shattered by shells. In 1967, the façade was renovated. However, the work was carried out with errors and the façade was again in need of repair
The city grant awarded for the renovation of the building at 3 Maria Konopnicka Street allowed the modernist finish of the facade to be restored. The work, completed in 2020, was aimed at repairing and reconstructing the sandstone cladding. The amount of the grant from the City of Warsaw for the renovation of the facade of the tenement was PLN 74,000, which accounted for 40.5 per cent of the total cost of the works
The odd numbered frontage of Konopnicka Street, with the houses built there in the 1930s, is an example of the modernism that was very fashionable at the time. The architecture of the building at No. 3, especially the original, fully preserved staircase in the style of luxurious functionalism, became the setting for a TV series made in 2015 about the famous pre-war actor Eugeniusz Bodo
Source: um.warszawa.pl
See also: Architecture | Tenement house | Architecture in Poland | Monument | Warsaw | Interesting facts
