Józef Święcicki


Józef Święcicki was a fecund designer and builder of Bydgoszcz, under Prussian rule. A vast majority of his eclectic-style works can still be found all around the city. Józef Swiecicki was part of architects and builders who gave a characteristic shape to the city at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, dominated by eclectic buildings with various styles, including Art Nouveau or Modernism.

Life

Józef Stanisław Święcicki was born on 9 March 1859 in Bromberg. He was the son of Franciszek, a shoemaker and Michalina. He had four brothers and three sisters, all born and baptized in Bydgoszcz. His mother left Franciszek, his father, who had turned alcoholic and died at 54 from delirium. Michalina took for second husband Anton Hoffmann, a city master bricklayer, who taught young Józef construction rudiments.
Around 1881, he graduated from secondary construction school and passed the state examination to become a builder. He performed professional training with Anton Hoffmann. He started to co-run with his stepfather a large design and construction business, Święcicki-Hoffmann studio, during a couple of years, before taking the lead of his own firm until 1903. This decision to preside over his personal company is linked to his marriage in 1888, and his subsequent leaving the family home, a rented flat at Gamm straße 26, today's Warmińskiego street 8, near Focha street.
His most productive period as a designer in Bromberg was in the 1890s. He designed over 60 tenement houses in downtown district among which 21 projects on Gdańska Street, the main city thoroughfare. He also designed a number of other buildings in various places around the city, as well as outside Bydgoszcz. He set up in 1892 a stucco ornament factory, which products decorated the façades of its tenement houses. Located at Kościuszki street 12, it soon became a profitable workshop. Even after its selling in the 1890s, the company, rebranded several times, operated until October 1912.
In 1898, he was commissioned by Józef Choraszewski, a Bromberg parish priest to work on the project of the Church of the Holy Trinity, but it was eventually realized by another architect, Roger Sławski.
He left many admired works that stand out today in the architecture of Bydgoszcz. In particular, three projects are seen as icons of Neo-Baroque architecture:
A major part of his works was the construction of tenement houses according to his own designs on plots he had purchased, which were then sold with a profitable margin.
In 1893 he became a board member of Bydgoski Bank Przemysłowy, and then deputy chairman of the bank's supervisory board in 1909.
In October 1894, Święcicki purchased the property at Gdańska Street 63, as well as probably few plots along Cieszkowskiego Street, to erect his own tenement. In September 1896, he moved to his new home with his family. He added a wing on Cieszkowskiego Street in 1899, to house his business headquarters where he worked till his death.
In 1905, the family settled in a newly erected house at Adam Mickiewicz Alley 17: in the recess of the estate he built a garage, where he stored his own car, one of the few private vehicles in Bromberg at the time. He funded several educational institutions in the city in the 1910s to help out poor but talented students of Bydgoszcz.
In the autumn of 1913, he went on a journey by train to rest in the Western German Empire. On the way back, he fell down while climbing in Berlin underground train, and suffered concussion. This injury caused his death, on 2 November 1913, at Berlin's St Hedwig hospital. His body was transported back to Bydgoszcz and buried in the Nowofarny cemetery in Bydgoszcz.

Personal life

Józef Święcicki from 1888 was married to Maria Henrietta Ehrlich. On 30 April 1895, they adopted Hugo Rudolf Fiedler, an abandoned boy from an orphanage, born 1892 in Berlin.
His favorite pastime was chess, which he played during most of his free time. Logically, he co-founded the Bydgoszcz Chess Society in 1886, to which he belonged as an honorary member till 1910.
In addition to this successful real estate trade, he is the author of two pieces premiered in Bydgoszcz municipal theater. He also published in 1910 an Illustrated Guide in Bydgoszcz, in which he presented all major buildings in a shortened, popular form, complemented with address lists of facilities. He also co-wrote a book about building conservation.
His son Hugo Święcicki graduated from the Agricultural University in Bonn and lived in western Germany. His wife Maria, however, had been living in Bydgoszcz until his death, and preserved the memory of Józef Święcicki, through testimonies and scholarship donations.

Style

Święcicki was rather a conservative creator. Most of his projects have dominantly an eclectic style, mostly prominent in its tenement houses, where one can perceive patterned detail arrangements with a forms of Historicism.
He boldly exploited elements of Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque architecture. Święcicki's style is characterized by a passion for symmetry, rhythmical vertical divisions, accentuated by the arrangement of windows, pilasters and a multitude of stucco ornaments.
In November 2018, the city of Bydgoszcz honored the memory of the architect by dedicating a mural to Święcicki and his works, on a wall located at the corner of Gdańska and Cieszkowskiego Streets, in front of his former house

Works in Bydgoszcz

YearEdificeRemarksPicture
1893Robert Aron TenementLocated at 36 Jagiellońska street
1893Albert Voigt tenementLocated at 38 Śniadeckich Street
1893Hotel "Pod Orlem"Located at 14 Gdańska Street. Registered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1894Pharmacy Pod Lwem Located at 37 Grunwaldzka street in Bydgoszcz
1895Oskar Ewald TenementLocated at 30 Gdańska Street
1895Franz Bauer TenementLocated at 30 Jagiellońska street
1895Józef Święcicki tenementLocated at 63 Gdańska Street. Registered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1895Carl Bradtke TenementLocated at 93 Gdańska Street. Registered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1896Tenement houseLocated at 48 Pomorska Street. Registered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1896Wilhelm Kopp's TenementLocated at 2 Wool Market square
1896Albert Voigt TenementLocated at 5 Pomorska Street. Registered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1896Tenement at 1 Freedom SquareRegistered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1896Tenement houseLocated at 69 Gdańska Street
1897Tenement houseLocated at 5 Kołłątaja street
1897Theonia Reichhardt HouseLocated at 36 Gdańska Street
1897Gustav Reschke's houseLocated at 17 Cieszkowskiego Street
1898Gustav Reschke's houseLocated at 11 Cieszkowskiego Street. Registered on Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship heritage list
1899Tenement houseLocated at 4 Cieszkowskiego Street. Project by Józef Święcicki, realized by Rudolf Kern.
1899Tenement houseLocated at 8 Cieszkowskiego Street
1905Józef Święcicki VillaLocated at 17 Adam Mickiewicz Alley
1911Tadeusz Browicz Hospital for Infectious Diseases in BydgoszczLocated at 10/18 Świętego Floriana Street, along the Brda river