Flatirons, Skyscrapers, & Disneylands: American Inspirations in Polish Architecture

budowa_gmachu_angielskiegonac.jpg, default, Construction of the building of the English Prudential Insurance Company on Napoleon Square in Warsaw, 1932, photo: The National Digital Archives/www.

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Architectural and urban planning models of American origin have always been popular in Poland; they were a symbol of modernity, wealth and the Western culture to which our country aspired. How well have they adopted in Poland?

Looking from a distance, one would think that the town was perched on a range of hills and hillocks. But no. It was the people who erected such high places for themselves. Sharp contours of towers, the most varied edifices, mighty gables, and colossal walls painted the landscape. What I could see from far away, from where I was standing, was not a 20th-century city but the bold, proud, firm shapes of some mighty fortress, some stronghold, some legendary castle of giants, enchanted treasures guarding diligently, some towers, forts, huge bastions defending fabulous royal capitals. And a fortress it was indeed, the stronghold of today; it is the capital, the financial capital, the economic capital - the capital of today’s power and the capital of work - New York.

Such were the impressions of the visit to New York recorded by Stefan Bryła, one of Poland’s most prominent constructors. The engineer travelled to the USA in 1912 as a young designer, barely 26 years old. The memoirs, published in a volume entitled America, give an account of his visits to many corners of North America since the Pole visited both Niagara Falls and Yellowstone Park, as well as numerous cities such as Salt Lake City, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. However, as a constructor and the future author of Poland’s first skyscrapers, he paid much attention to architecture, especially to those high structures reaching the sky. He writes, for example: ‘Are skyscrapers pretty? Can they be pretty? (...) Just as you don’t look at the boulevard townhouses of Paris in isolation, just as you don’t look at the simple, smooth, quadrangular towers and spires of medieval castles in isolation, neither should you look at the skyscrapers in isolation,’ emphasising the role these types of buildings play in the city’s skyline.

Reaching for the clouds

While in New York, Stefan Bryła worked on the erection of the 241-metre Woolworth Building, which was the tallest building in the world from 1913, when it was completed, until 1930, when the 318-metre Chrysler Building was erected.

Thumbnail — The building of the 'Prudential' Insurance Company in Warsaw, photo: The National Digital Archives/www.nac.gov.pl

For the young engineer, the opportunity to learn about the steel structure of such a tall building and to observe its construction was certainly an important experience. On his return to Poland, Stefan Bryła developed an innovative method of welding steel so that it could be used to create long-lasting and, over time, increasingly taller skeleton frames. In the 1920s, he used his proprietary method for the construction of bridges, but it was not long before he began to apply it to the construction of skyscrapers as well. In 1934, the construction of a 62-metre-high, luxury residential high-rise building in the centre of Katowice was completed; less than a year later, the 66-metre-high headquarters of the Prudential Insurance Company was erected in Warsaw. The welded structures of these first pre-war Polish sky-scrapers were the work of Stefan Bryła; the fact that the Warsaw building survived accurate artillery fire during the Warsaw Uprising can attest to its durability.

Stefan Bryła was shot by the German firing squad in a street execution as early as September 1939,

but it is beyond doubt that, had he survived the war, he would have designed many more modern and tall buildings. That is because skyscrapers have always been held in high esteem in Poland, and since the beginning of the 20th century when such constructions became possible, it was with them that modernity and progress were identified. They were seen as the objects shaping modern cities. It was for that reason that the Silesian Parliament financed the construction of the Katowice skyscraper in the 1930s – the tall building was to show how impressively and dynamically the Polish part of Upper Silesia was developing.

In a Western style

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Warsaw, skyscrapers at Daszyńskiego Roundabout, photo: Tomasz Jastrzębowski/Reporter/East News

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The myth of a metropolis with a skyline filled with high-rise buildings, being a synonym for a prosperous and modern city, came to Poland from the United States. The New York or Chicago skyline is actually still coveted by many Polish cities. The closest to this ideal is, of course, Warsaw, whose skyline today features more than 30 buildings higher than 100 metres, with more under construction. American-style skyscrapers also appeared in times that did not favour similar investments - the towers of the Hotel Forum or the Intraco and Elektrim office buildings constructed in Warsaw in the 1970s were a materialisation of the policy of the time, which was to introduce a bit of a ‘Western’ style and way of life to Poland. It was decided that the most impressive way to accomplish this was to build high-rise buildings. As a result, the skyline of Warsaw has changed spectacularly in the last quarter of a century, and although the Polish capital is far from being a metropolis full of record-high buildings, it is the ‘ridge’ of high-rise buildings that is today one of the most characteristic and most photographed landscapes in Warsaw.

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McDonald’s Restaurant, Białołęka (near McDonald’s Restaurant, Białołęka (near Toruńska Thoroughfare), Warsaw, Poland, photo: Crusier /GNU FDL/Wikipedia.org Thoroughfare), Warsaw, Poland, photo: Crusier /GNU FDL/Wikipedia.org

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North America, with its symbols, emblems and way of life, was a coveted model for many decades of the 20th century. That is, after all, why one of the most eagerly awaited objects in Poland during the transition period was the American hamburger bar.

The arrival of the distinctive yellow logo of the McDonald’s chain in Polish cities was tantamount to Poland entering the previously inaccessible ‘culture of the West’. 17th June 2022 marked the 30th anniversary of the opening of the American chain’s first location in Poland (that particular bar no longer exists today; in 2014, the pavilion was replaced with a new office building). The opening ceremony of the pavilion on the corner of Marszałkowska and Świętokrzyska was covered in the media, Jacek Kuroń and Agnieszka Osiecka attended, and the popular sandwich was bought by 45,000 people on the first day. Three decades later, there are still localities where the arrival of a McDonald’s is a major event.

Model of the city

The American way of life, materialised through architecture, was a particularly vivid model during the transition period. It inspired on a large scale - it was then that the process of building glass skyscrapers and corporate office buildings began in earnest, as also the large shopping centres, previously admired with envy in American films and TV series. It also had its small-scale emanation in Poland; these were fast-food venues or petrol stations, and car dealerships. A car of one’s own, preferably of a Western brand, was another eagerly awaited product that for decades had remained out of reach. When it became accessible, it brought an array of buildings associated with its service. Shiny, glazed, brightly lit roadside pavilions with huge logos of well-known brands were another important element of the Polish landscape of the times of transformation, not only practical but also symbolic.

The culture of driving around town in one’s own car, also transplanted from the USA, has left its mark in the form of wide, multi-lane roadways crisscrossing Polish cities. In the 1970s, the construction of the tall Forum Hotel in the centre of Warsaw was supposed to give the capital a metropolitan flair, as was the construction of the Łazienkowska Thoroughfare, no less symbolic ofi the prosperity of a country where everyone has a car. To this day, public debates juxtapose the model of the ‘American city’ with large buildings, wide arteries and car parks, with the Danish or Dutch city, intimate, focused on pedestrian or cycling traffic. It seems that in Poland, both these models have their supporters.

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Ventana housing estate near Warsaw, a shot from an image film, photo: Studio Rondo /www.ventana.pl

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TV series and films have become an important source of knowledge about what life is like overseas, in a country that in Poland is still considered happy and prosperous. Spectacular evidence of this can be seen in the lavishly decorated mansions, many of which were built shortly after Dynasty had begun airing on Polish television. Of course, not everyone can afford a Carrington villa, but there are more ways to live the ‘American style’. Modelled on American suburbs, the model of a housing estate with rows of identical, straight houses preceded by driveways and lawns is popular in Poland. It has its variants, the housing estate can be fenced off (which does not happen in the USA), and the houses can have more or less ornate shapes, but a sense of inspiration by the spatial layout of the suburbs from The Wonder Years TV series is omnipresent. The atmosphere of American suburbs from the 1950s can be found not only in today’s housing estates but also in places created earlier, such as Tunelowa Street in Wrocław, where in the 1990s, a stylistically uniform complex of single-family buildings was erected.

A house in the suburbs

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Walendia housing estate, photo: https://walendia.pl/

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This is not the end of the story. ‘American’ standards can be applied not only to housing estates but also to individual houses. ‘American-style houses are extremely practical and comfortable, which is why they have also found their way well into the Polish reality,’ one can learn from the offer of one of the companies selling ready-made house designs from a catalogue. ‘The American-style house’ is, in fact, along with the ‘modern barn’, the modernist cube or the block inspired by the form of a manor house, one of the sstyles of villa that customers are interested in. ‘American-style house designs are a classic block with a garage, topped by a sloping roof in shades of grey. Most often, these are single-storey house designs with a white façade enriched with detailing in the form of façade wooden boards, tiles or bricks,’ reads the description of such a residence. But residential building designs from the USA also had been an inspiration much earlier.

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Flatiron Building, New York, photo: Ken Welsh/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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One of the more iconic buildings in New York City to this day is the 1902 building now known as the Flatiron Building (originally the Fuller Building). Considered one of the first skyscrapers in the world – it is 86 metres high – it sits on a corner, narrow, triangular plot, filling it entirely. This is what gave it its unusual shape, still referred to today as the 'flatiron'.

A similar flatiron was erected between 1911 and 1913 at Plac Unii Lubelskiej in Warsaw. The Kacperski tenement house, as it is referred to, also owes its unusual shape to the shape of the plot. Poznań also has its flatiron. Here, in 2019, a townhouse was erected, recreating the shape of the house that once existed on this site; its design was created by CDF Architekci. In 2020, the flatiron building won the Jan Baptista Quadro competition for the most beautiful building in Poznań; both the authors of its original version and its contemporary incarnation refer to the famous Flatiron Building as an inspiration for the design.

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Żelazko Tenement House, Poznań, photo: CDF Architekci Design Office

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Pattern intermingling, inspirations and borrowings are perfectly normal in architecture, but there is more to drawing on patterns from American architecture. It was this country that for years was considered the best role model in Poland, and the adjective ‘American’ was associated with something to be dreamt of and of excellent quality. Adapted to Polish contexts, American architectural fashions and spatial solutions were supposed to improve the quality of life and help turn the country into a modern, wealthy, and pretty one. Successfully?

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