THE OFFICER’S COOPERATIVE COLONY OF THE VI CORPS IN LVIV

© Sadowska E.-J., 2015

In Lviv, in the Halitska district, beneath St. Jack’s mount and St. Jack’s street (now O. Archipenka street), near the newly delineated Czereśniowa (now Tchereshneva street) and Oficerska (I. Samiyllenka, now O. Ptchilka street), parallel to Zielona street, a Cooperative Officers’ Colony was founded between the years 1923–1931. It was composed of mirrored brick houses, with an architectural style highly reminiscent of Polish residential architecture of the XVII century (the so-called “dworek style”), with high, two level combination roofs (the so-called Polish roof), with characteristically soft gable lines, oval gable windows, column porticos, at times reduced to pilasters. All of them had a characteristic two-lane layout, characterized by symmetry, rhythm and an axial composition. The designers of these houses were: arch. Tadeusz Wróbel, a professor of the Lviv University оf Technology, who was also a student of professor Ignacy Dressler at the Urban Design Institute, captain of the Polish Army arch. Władysław Limbergen, arch. Witołd Jamimowski and arch. Roman Voelpel. The residential complex was designed as a layout of houses located within individual gardens, with streets lined with fruit trees. The complex became professor Ignacy Drexler’s vision of a small scale garden city come true.

The aforementioned small scale residential complex for officers of the Polish Army and their families has not been frequently discussed in peer reviewed literature, with the notable exception of a lecture at the Scientific Session dedicated to the jubilee of arts history professor Zbigniew Bania from Warsaw. It is also not present in the bibliography of one of its designers, professor Tadeusz Wróbel. Although, one can find a substantial amount of descriptions of it among the reminiscences of some of its inhabitants in the “Cracovia Leopolis” organ of the Lviv And South-Eastern Fringes Lovers Society. The Author became interested in the matter while gathering materials on the topic of professor Ignacy Drexler’s works.

The Author was the student of Janina Winowska (1906–2007), who hailed from Lviv and was a doctor of Roman studies at the Jan Casimir University, a Polish language teacher from the VII High School in Kraków, a leader of the Lviv and Kraków scouts and an activist of the Lviv And South-Eastern Fringes Lovers Society, akin to her godfather, professor Ryszard Wolwowicz of the Institute of Petrol and Earth Gas (born in 1921). She also worked at the History Of Architecture and Historical Monuments Preservation Institute at the Faculty of Architecture of the Kraków University of Technology along with dr arch. Lesław Grubski (1922–2006) and prof. dr hab. Andrzej M. Olszewski (1930–2005), an arts historian, who were repatriated from Lviv after 1945, and who often reminisced of the times spent in their family city.

The plans of each individual house, as well as the building permits and correspondence between the complex’s administration and the municipal government are preserved at the Lviv Oblast National Archive, which has been confirmed by a query. The Polish National Digital Archive also has a number of photographs showing the houses from the period between 1920 and 1930.

On the 22 of October 1939, a referendum was hosted on the matter of including Eastern Małopolska into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, with three waves of deportations taking place in 1940 into the far eastern section of the Soviet Union, mostly including retired officers and their families, as well as the families of active officers that were found. After 1945, upon the change of borders, a forced repatriation took place. The repatriated were offered the choice to freely sell their real estate by the Soviet government. At the same time, all property left behind by the repatriated was nationalized and declared as owned by the

state. The cultural capital of the inhabitants of the Officers’ Colony in Lviv, due to the conditions stated above, did not remain with those, for whom the houses had been designed. It was not handed down to the descending generations, as a community with of a common civilization and culture had been broken, along with their territorial possessions. The houses of the Officers’ Colony were given to new residents, higher ranking officers, but of the Soviet Army. The houses themselves have been well tended to and are in a good condition. New plasters have been laid, with the colors of the façades replaced, often with each part of the building having a different color – which often means that a single building’s first floor is different than its ground level, which is again different to its balconies and so on. The Lviv Officers’ Colony Of The VI District Corps was unlike many similar settlements in post-war Poland, it differed from them in terms of topography, a skillful composition of the buildings into the existing countryside, as well as a high quality of both design and construction.