An excerpt from Tamten Lwów—an eight-volume monograph about Lwów (Lviv)—in which Witold Szolginia describes the Jewish quarter as he remembers it from his visits in the 1930s. Witold Szolginia (1923-1996) was an architect, a native of Lwów until he was expelled to present-day Poland in 1946. Called “the encyclopedist of […]
Read More
Many of Lviv’s old buildings had communal sinks located in courtyards, hallways, or on galleries. No longer a water source for the residents of these buildings, most of the sinks have been removed and today are popular antiques. Only a handful remain in their original locations, especially the decorative ones […]
From Lviv Today – a bilingual lifestyle magazine Here is the astounding story of the Galician girl who managed to conquer thousands of fans with her poetic travel essays and become Ukraine’s first internationally renowned travel writer, documentalist, and journalist. Early beginnings Sofia Jablonska was born in 1907 in the […]
I love ghost signs. These messages from the past are one of my favorite parts of the urban landscape. I get overly excited every time I discover a new one. Ghost signs (aka fading ads or brick ads) are old hand-painted signs that have been preserved on a building for […]
Name: Silskyi Hospodar (The Village Farmer)Type: Agricultural organizationGoal: To teach peasants modern farming methodsFounded by: the Revs. Toma and Julian DutkevychYears active: 1899-1944 The Ukrainian Cooperative Movement, which began in Galicia in 1883, addressed the economic plight of the Ukrainian people through the creation of financial, agricultural, and trade cooperatives that enabled Ukrainians to […]
Location: 1-39 Panasa Myrnoho St. (formerly ul. Własna Strzecha)Built for: City officials and civil servantsYears of construction: 1928-1932Architects: Władysław Klimczak, Maksymilian Koczur, and M. KolbuszewskiStyle: Villas in Polish Manor style (styl dworkowy) After overcoming World War I and the financial crisis, housing developments (often called “colonies”) started to be built […]
Today the jackdaw is the most recognizable symbol of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria; yet, this crow was not even found on the crownland’s first coat of arms, which featured three crowns for Galicia along with separate symbols for Lodomeria and Auschwitz (Oświęcim). Why was the first coat of […]
An anti-toilet or anti-urination device is a form of hostile architecture, an element of the built environment that prevents people from urinating on the street. There are two kinds of such devices: urine deflectors, especially cones built into the nooks of buildings, which cause the culprit to be showered with […]
The first electric tramline in Lviv was built ahead of the General Regional Exhibition of 1894 to bring visitors from the main railway station to the site of the exhibition. To power the line, the first municipal electric station of direct current (DC) was also built, and to house the […]
From the End of Nineteenth Century to WWI When Galicia came under the rule of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1772, no specially built barracks or barracks complexes existed in Lviv. At first, the Austrian military used the premises of Lviv’s monasteries for magazines (ammunition storehouses) and barracks (Ger: Kaserne/Caserne; Polish: koszary; Ukr: касарні, казарми, кошари). […]
Remnants of old manually operated coal elevators remain tucked away in a some of Lviv’s courtyards. These artifacts date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — a time when coal was widely used for domestic heating. At that time, coal would have been delivered to the courtyards of […]
