The tenement house standing at Sienna 57 is an inconspicuous but unique building. It was built in the 1930s for the famous Warsaw architect Jerzy Gelbard and his wife Izabella. The man himself made the design, which used an original composition that is still unique in the capital. The modernist tenement witnessed many tragedies related to the creation of the ghetto and the Warsaw Uprising, which makes it an even more valuable building.
The tenement house at 57 Sienna Street, built between 1937 and 1938 for Jerzy Gelbard, is distinguished by its unique composition of the façade, which has no analogue in the whole of Warsaw. The central, wide and glazed bay window, decorated with rollers under the windows, emphasises the horizontality of the façade and gives it lightness. On the courtyard façade, the architect applied his typical solutions, i.e. smaller bay windows.
The entrance portal on the street side was made of marble, which also decorated the entrance hall. The floors were lined with the characteristic ‘gorse tiles’. Although the decoration of the lobby is no longer as rich as it was originally, one can still admire the surviving coffee stone bands, the magnificent mirror opposite the entrance door, the original wooden doors to the flats or the elegant staircase. Modern and very luxurious for its time, the building is equipped with a lift and other technological innovations. The building consists of a front building and a detached outbuilding surrounded by greenery. Several years ago, the facades of the building were renovated. Unfortunately, during the renovation, the original stucco, characteristic of Polish architecture of the 1930s, disappeared under a layer of polystyrene foam and ordinary mortar. Despite this, the building is still one of the most distinctive and original in all of Warsaw.
Before the outbreak of war, Sienna 57 was a meeting place for intellectuals and artists. Jerzy Gelbard, the building’s owner and architect, and his wife Bella (Izabella Stachowicz), known as ‘Czajka’, collected valuable art objects in their home and invited well-known artists. Bella was the author of memoirs, including scandalous and unabashed confabulations, and an activist in the AL partisans during the war. In September 1939, despite the bombing, the Gelbards’ tenement house did not suffer any damage. During the cold winter of 1939/1940, artistic meetings were still held in the Gelbards’ flat, heated only by an iron cooker.
In the autumn of 1940, after the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the tenement house found itself within its borders. Jerzy Gelbard, no longer able to design, occupied himself with painting and teaching architectural drawing at school. The situation of the residents of Sienna, relatively wealthy before the war, was somewhat better than that of other ghetto inhabitants, although their lives were full of difficulties. When the area of the ghetto was reduced, the Gelbards’ tenement house found itself on the Aryan side. Jerzy and Bella managed to escape, after which Jerzy hid under the name Kwiatkowski, but in 1943 he was arrested by the Germans for hiding Jews. He was sent to the Pawiak prison and later to the Majdanek concentration camp, where he died in 1944.
The tenement house at 57 Sienna Street also has its own history from the time of the Warsaw Uprising, when the quarters of the Second Platoon of “Chrobry” II Company were located in its neighbourhood. This event is commemorated by a plaque on the building. Unfortunately, there is no plaque on the façade of the building commemorating Jerzy Gelbard, an outstanding architect, painter and volunteer in the 1920 war. His life and work bear witness to the tragic history of Warsaw and its inhabitants.
Source: miastarytm.pl
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