The tenement house as a building form in relation to the large-scale urban development of Warsaw 1864-1919

Martyn, PJ

Abstract

The evolving urban landscape has been investigated in the
socio-economic context of Warsaw's incorporation into the
Russian Empire (another defeated Polish Uprising, rural
immigation in the wake of tsarist social reforms from 1861,
Jewish immigration from the Empire's interior, economic
integration and the city's expansion as a trading and
banking centre between Russia and the West). Spatial
growth has been interpreted as resulting primarily from
private property speculation, limited spatially by tsarist
military strategy (fortifying of the city 1878-1911).
Secondary urban-creating factors have been identified in
industrialisation and St. Petersburg's control of the
municipal budget, thereby emphasising the private sector's
primacy.
The tenement house is defined as "barracks"-type
housing, subdivided into multiple dwel1ing. units. This
building form is perceived as the fibre in the city’s
large-scale urban development until World War I
(E. Szwankowski).
The importance of 1919; the year when fair rent
legislation and new regulations to control private property
development were introduced by a reconstituted Polish
administration, seeking for the first time to curb the
excesses of private tenement construction, is taken to be
purely symbolic,- the end of tenement speculation as it had
been known until that point in a purely hypothetical sense
(J . Cegielski).
Most commercial and • even certain industrial
enterprises, dominated by small manufacturing firms and
workshops rather than factories located in more outlying areas (W.Pruss) are expected to have been absorbed by the
tenement house.
The tenement emerged in the raid-180Os as a complex of
interconnecting building components arranged around a
central courtyard or courtyards, subject to broadly applied
building regulations (Polish and from the 1860s tsarist),
which nevertheless increasingly failed to preserve
constructional standards and even, so far as the Polish
Home Rule era is concerned, a certain uniformity for which
such legislation had originally been devised (S. Herbst,
J. Roguska).
An "inner" city of tenement houses is identified as
the main area for investigation, unfolding during earlier
stages of development on open terrain, later replacing
older buildings or occupying remaining undeveloped areas,
including gardens as well as infill projects and street
block "back-building". Cells or landscape units
originating from the period under investigation usually
include, or are composed exclusively, of tenement
multi-apartment housing blocks which may serve as subjects
for empirical research. A degree of functional continuity
is expected (A. Rottermund, J. Chroicicki, J. Roguska, B.
Chmiel, 2. Walkiewicz, J. Sujecki).
The thesis is divided into three main parts:
1. analysis of the urban profile in 1914, based on a
detailed property and apartments census from 1919.
municipal statistics from 1913 and a 1:2500 scale base plan
giving rise to a model of urban physical structure composed
of functional zones;
2. hypothetical urban form and land use patterns
resulting from urban-creating processes of the second half
of the 19th. and early-20th. centuries are tested in sub-study areas within the inner urban area and especially
in districts shaped largely during the period of
investigation (street block analysis in the inner urban
core, tenement belt and inner-peripheral areas; also
identification of urbanising districts outside of the main
study area as regions potentially ripe for advancing
property speculation, where other building forms
predominated over tenement-barracks housing, or the latter
building type was entirely absent from the profile);
3. the tenement house in the urban landscape
(Stadtlasidschafi) : building layout, plot parcel 1 isation,
changing constructional forms (flat subdivision, subsequent
outbuildings and raising of additional storeys), social
compositional and stratification considered in relation to
identified tenement "types", empirical examination of
surviving tenement houses or ensembles constituting
fragments of 19th. century urban topography within the
present day Mid-town . Reference is also to
be made to inner city areas which have undergone complete
redevelopment since their total obliteration in 1943 or
1944 in order to permit an integrated evaluation of the
"historic" urban form regarded as evolving organically
until the 20th. century, of which cells or landscape units
have survived in other parts of Warsaw's Mid-Town.
A methodological question crucial to the analysis has
been the undertaking of an inquiry conducted at varying
scales: metropolitan area (Greater Warsaw) - inner city
(Warsaw city within its pre-suburban incorporation
municipal boundaries) - functional zones or districts -
urban units - street blocks - building plot3 accommodating
tenement property cells or real estate divisions. In
Part I the study area is delineated according to property and demographic data from 1919/1913 in relation to street
block research units, with an aim to facilitating the break
down of this area into sub-study areas of approximately
consistent building and housing density characteristics
(Part II). In Part III tenement properties of varying
constructional, functional and social characteristics
(often undergoing changes during the study period itself)
may be interpreted in relation to their location within the
study area, constructional chronology, later extensions or
internal alterations and functions these buildings perform
at the time of writing in cases where continuity or a
degree of continuity has been retained in the city's
functional structure (especially residential, but also
office space, shops, workshops in groundfloors and even
basements).
Particular complications have arisen in connection
with the unavailability or total absence of documention.
Primary sources are centred around property census
statistics (municipal records from the 1860s, 1882 and
1891, as well as the all important 1919 survey) and
cartographic evidence from the study period or the interwar
years, supplemented by fragmentary published information,
including articles taken from contemporaneous newspapers
and periodicals, land registry files for selected
individual properties, certain tsarist bureaucratic sources
as well as photographic information from the time.
Secondary sources taking the form of published research or
monographs which have proved directly relevant to the urban
analysis are listed in the literary survey, while other
points of reference are contained in the notes placed
before the conclusion.
A comparative aspect of the thesis would endeavour to place 19th. century Warsaw's urban pattern In a regional
context thereby acknowledging the irnpoi tance of seeking
models of urban growth and form, together with broad social
and economic processes common to cities in history. Models
of "tenement city" development have been sought in studies
of the urban profiles of Berlin and Vienna, although in the
specific case of Warsaw comparisons might be drawn with
urban form and tenement house evolution in such principal
cities of the Russian Empire as Riga, Odessa, Kiev, Vilna
(Vilnius) and Minsk, apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
This latter aspect, while considered fundamental to placing
the urban case study in a wider urban context, has had to
be cut short in view of limited time and space.
Historical analysis in urban geography of this period
in particular is regarded as being of relevance to our own
times, not least because the reinterpreting and
rehabilitation of the 19th. century urban fabric - and in
Warsaw's case the question of regenerating large parts of
the inner city, substantial portions of which were
designated. or quite by accident turned into, urban fallow
areas - have become pressing contemporary issues.

Citation

Martyn, P. The tenement house as a building form in relation to the large-scale urban development of Warsaw 1864-1919. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 20, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 20, 2021
• Publisher URL: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.306255
• Related Public URLs: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.306255
• Award Date: Jan 1, 1991