Located in Wola, Peretz Street was formerly known as Ceglana Street. It was given its present name in October 1951 to commemorate the writer and columnist Icchok Lejb Peretz, one of the most important Jewish authors of Yiddish literature, who lived and worked until his death in the now defunct building at No. 1. For years, the street was inhabited mainly by Jews. During the Second World War, the street was partly within the ghetto.
During the Warsaw Uprising, heavy fighting took place in the Ceglana area, as well as on Grzybowska and Krochmalna streets. Rubble remained of the dense development consisting of factories, workshops and tenement houses. The post-war years saw the decline of the area and the slow demolition of the remnants of the surviving buildings. Very little of the old landscape survives today, just isolated tenements and fragments of walls, today completely out of keeping with the surrounding modern architecture. One of the handful of buildings that has managed to survive in virtually unchanged form is the modernist townhouse standing on the corner of Pereca and Żelazna Streets.
Construction of the building, which was modern for its time, began in the second half of the 1930s and was completed shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The building was erected on the site of one of the buildings forming part of Herman Jung’s brewery, occupying the entire quarter bounded by Grzybowska, Waliców, Ceglana and Żelazna Streets. The four-storey building has acquired a rather simple and economical form. Its modernist character is emphasised by strips of windows, between which a simple brick detail was used. The same pattern appears in the ground floor. The facades are finished with clinker bricks. The corner of the building and the lower, three-storey part are accentuated with balconies. The entrance to the building is from Pereca Street. A spacious gate leads to the hallway, where the old modernist decor has been preserved. On the walls one can still see a continuation of the brick pattern from the ground floor, and on the floor there is a characteristic mosaic made of small tiles.
The tenement at the corner of Żelazna and Pereca (then Ceglana) in 1938 and 2024. Source: State Archive in Warsaw and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski
Żelazna 54 with the wall of the former brewery visible in 2013 and the same place today. Photo credit: May/photopolska.eu, License: CC-BY-SA 3.0 and whiteMAD/Mateusz Markowski
In 1944, an insurgent outpost of the 4th company of the 2nd battalion of “Lech Grzybowski” from the “Chrobry II” grouping operated in the building. In the post-war years, the facades of the building were plastered over, thus covering up any characteristic features. In recent years, completely new buildings have sprung up around the building, which has definitely changed the landscape of this part of the city. The building now presents a rather depressing sight and awaits renovation to restore the chic and classy modernist buildings of the 1930s.
Source: warszawskieunikaty.home.blog, warszawa1939.pl
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