In Mukachevo I found a few antique metal shutters made by the company DUKO, which was based in Prague-Vinohrady. As they are Czech made, they likely date from the interwar period. Another grouping of DUKO shutters I also found a roller shutter made by the Budapest-based copmany Paschka. There still […]

Traces of Mukachevo’s Czechoslovakian past can still be found in the city. (During the interwar period, Mukachevo along with the rest of Zakarpattia (Transcarpathia) was part of Czechoslovakia.) “In 1883, Antonín Kunz (1859–1910) founded a company in Hranice [Czech Republic] for the repair and production of small farm machinery and then specialized […]

Terrazzo is a composite material made from marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other chips and poured with a binder. This material was used to pave many entranceways, stairwells, and communal spaces in Lviv’s buildings. It was often decorated with geometric designs, the year of installation, the name of the manufacturer, […]

The oldest Ukrainian-language grave that I found of an ancestor is my great-great-great grandmother’s grave. She died in 1883 and is buried in the village Luchkivtsi, about an hour north east of Lviv. Anna’s husband was a German man named Venceslaus (Karlo) Kuhn. The etymological spelling used is called Maksymovychivka. […]

The building at 3 Drukarska Street was built c. 1543, and was owned by Stanislaw Schtansl Scholtz. The building later become known as “Under the Mother of God” because of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the façade. In 1858 the building housed the St. Sophia Association of the […]

My friend found an antique roller shutter in Zhovkva, an old fortress town near Lviv. As the manufacturer’s mark is in German, and the company was based in Vienna, the shutter probably dates to before WWI. Photo credit: Charitie Hyman

This is a unique find for me. There are about 8 of these antique locks still attached to a building in Rzeszów, Poland. They were made by a company L. Russ in Drohobycz. The city of Drohobycz is presently in Ukraine, but both Drohobycz and Rzeszów were historically part of Galicia […]

I found a few antique Vienna- and Rzeszów-made roller shutters and locks in Rzeszów, a city in Galicia that is now in Poland. Alfred Woltär Wien Probably the same A. Woltär that made shutters, which can still be found in Vienna. Rzeszów-made locks and shutters

In Chernivtsi I found manhole covers from Austrian (pre-WWI) and Romanian (interwar) times. I saw both German-language and Romanian-language ones. The Austrian-era ones use the German name for the city, Czernowitz. The ones made by Pittel & Brausewetter company include Wien (Vienna). This company was founded in 1870 in Bratislava […]

In the 1800s and early 1900s (and probably earlier), many of my ancestors lived in Brody, including some Polish and German ancestors. However, since Brody was severely destroyed during the wars of the last century and because many of my relatives were forced to flee, very few traces of their […]