Name: Narodna Torhovlia (People’s Trade)Type: Consumer cooperativeFounded by: Vasyl Nahirnyi and Appolon NychaiYears active: 1883-1944 The Ukrainian Cooperative Movement in Galicia addressed the economic plight of the Ukrainian people through the creation of financial, agricultural, and trade cooperatives that enabled Ukrainians to pool their resources, obtain less expensive loans and insurance, and pay less […]

Approximately 170,000 Ukrainians from the Austro-Hungarian crownlands of Galicia and Bukovina (Bukovyna) arrived in Canada from September 1891 to August 1914. The vast majority settled in the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, where they obtained land to farm. Few of the early immigrants would have called themselves Ukrainian, […]

“The Galician Petroleum Industry” by Valerie Schatzker for the Drohobycz Administrative District website From the middle of the nineteenth century, the history of the Jews of the Drohobycz Administrative District was closely connected with the history of the petroleum industry. As the demand for naphtha lamp oil grew, the oil-rich […]

I’ve combed through hundreds of old photographs of Lviv (Lemberg / Lwów) in search of hand-painted signs that are visible today as “ghost signs.” While I’ve only been able to find one such example – a photograph of a milkhouse, the search was not in vain: I came out with […]

Today probably few people know when they climb up the High Castle (Vysokyi Zamok) in Lviv, one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations, they are walking up a monument built in the late nineteenth century to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Union of Lublin – the pact which […]

The Lemkos and Their Fate The Lemkos are an ethnic group who historically inhabited the mountain valleys and foothills of the Carpathians in a region (called Lemkovyna or Lemkivshchyna) that today stretches along the border between Poland and Slovakia covering some western territories in Ukraine. The area that today belongs […]

Teodor Talowski is one of the most important Polish architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He has been described as the “Galician Gaudi” or the “Polish Gaudi” because he combined late Historicism with Secession (Art Nouveau) and Modernist influences. His works include apartment buildings, churches, chapels, and […]

Antique steel roller shutters dating from before WWII can still be found around Lviv, covering the windows and doors of former storefronts. Some of these shutters are still used; many, however, look as if they haven’t been opened in decades. These remnants of the past are especially interesting because their […]

‘The Eastern Gates of the Austrian Empire’ In 1772 the city of Brody became part of the Habsburg Monarchy as a border town of the crownland of Galicia and Lodomeria – first with the Commonwealth of Poland and from 1795 with the Russian Empire. The international border was about 6 […]

The Volute in Architecture The volute is the spiral, scroll-like ornament found in the capital of the Ionic column, and which was later used in Corinthian and Composite column capitals. Deriving from the Latin word voluta (“scroll”), the ornament has many possible origins including the curve of the ram’s horns, […]