From Baltic Shore to Distant Lands: The Architecture of Gdynia & Poland’s Great Emigration

dworzec_gdynia_polona_12.jpg, default, The Maritime Station in Gdynia, 1935–1939, photo: Henryk Poddębski / National Library Polona

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They stood on the edge of the Baltic, clutching suitcases and papers, watching the gangway as their names were called. For thousands of Poles between the wars, Gdynia was not just a modern port city – it was the last piece of home before a leap into the unknown.

When independence was regained in 1918 after 123 years of partitions, Poles were filled with joy and pride – but statehood brought many new challenges that the fledgling Polish government couldn’t always cope with quickly enough. There was foremost the need to unite this reborn country out of the three different regions that had been functioning separately for over a century, but there was also war damage, threats from neighbouring countries, underdeveloped industry, and a lack of infrastructure. All these and many of the other problems of the young Polish state contributed to growing unemployment in cities and poverty in overpopulated villages.

In the very first years of independence, the state authorities proclaimed that emigrating for work was a negative phenomenon and always meant Poland lost out. But it soon turned out that helping citizens move abroad would become a method for dealing with social unrest and the lack of work. It worked because emigration was already such a common phenomenon in Poland with traditions of its own, a solution that had been used throughout the partition era for both economic and political reasons.

The right to emigrate

In the March Constitution of 1921, in Chapter Five, Article 101, there is a provision on the freedom of emigration: 'Every citizen has the freedom to choose his place of residence and stay within the territory of the State, to resettle and emigrate, but also the freedom to choose his occupation and earn a living, and to transfer his property.'

Thumbnail — Wychodźca: a weekly devoted to emigration and re-emigration issues, Vol. 11, No. 2/3 (February/March 1932)

Shortly afterwards, the Polish authorities began to implement further means and methods of helping those willing to move abroad. There was a system of discounts on tickets and luggage, and from 1932, those applying for a so-called emigration passport were exempt from paying for it. The Polish state signed emigration agreements with an increasing number of countries, facilitating the settlement of Polish citizens there (in the interwar period, Poland had similar agreements with France, Germany, Estonia and Bolivia, among others).

There were organisations offering legal and material assistance to emigrants. The largest and most important of them was the Polish Emigration Society, founded in 1918, which provided information on emigration opportunities, helped with procedures, ran emigration hotels in Warsaw, Gdańsk, Gdynia and Wejherowo, and also published a magazine called Wychodzica (Leaver) and guides and information books for those interested in emigration.

The phenomenon of emigration was also connected to newly-revived dreams about Polish overseas colonies after regaining independence – state authorities were eager to subsidise settlement companies that created Polish enclaves in distant countries, mainly in South America, encouraging the creation of both large and compact Polish communities.

A station for ships

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The Maritime Station in Gdynia, 1935-1939, photo: Henryk Poddębski / National Library Polona

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As well as creating facilities for those wanting to leave the country, the Polish state also constructed the infrastructure necessary for travel. Gdynia was made the focal point on the country’s emigration map. The construction of a port city on the part of the Baltic coast that had been regained along with Polish independence was one of the new state’s flagship investments. Among the numerous investments were the Maritime Station and the extensive facilities for servicing and preparing large groups of emigrants for departure. The port in Gdynia became not only a place for the import and export of goods, but also people.

Passenger service had begun in Gdynia before all these spectacular especially-designed buildings appeared: the first ship to take Polish emigrants on board used to anchor at a temporary wooden pier and began sailing in 1923. Exactly ten years later, the Maritime Station came into operation. The original plan was to construct a huge building stretching along the whole of the newly built 400-metre pier, with separate areas for emigrants going to Europe and the Americas, accommodation rooms, offices for institutions related to serving emigrants and the headquarters of the overseas post. When construction was due to begin, the world’s economy had been hit by a crisis, so the concept was cut back: the reduced building was erected in the northern part of the pier at the French Quay. The design of the building was prepared by the Katowice branch of the Berlin engineering studio Dyckerhoff & Widmann. An architect from Warsaw called Wacław Tomaszewski, who had settled in Gdynia, worked with them and likely created the concept and preliminary design.

Passenger hall, luggage space

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The Emigration Museum in the building of the former Maritime Station in Gdynia, photo: press materials

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The building was divided into two parts. At the front was the vast three-story Passenger Hall, while at the back was the nearly-120-metre-long Transit Warehouse. The division into two zones was reflected in the architecture. The front part of the building with the Passenger Hall was given a modernist style that was simple and austere. Its massive facade was densely divided by vertical pilasters that covered horizontal strips of windows, under which a simple roofing stretched out to mark the building’s entrance. Its simple, but at the same time quite monumental, shape was topped with a flattened dome. The interior of the Passenger Hall was basically devoid of decoration – its open space was complemented by galleries with ceremonial stairs leading to them, while on the walls hung bronze bas-reliefs with images of Marshal Józef Piłsudski and President Ignacy Mościcki, as well as two commemorative plaques honouring the minister who pushed for Gdynia’s transformation, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, and the day the station opened. The elegance of this cool space was evidenced by the rounded balustrades of the stairs and the specially designed floor (arranged to guide visitors in the right direction). The open space of the hall was also used multiple times for public events, academies, rallies and balls.

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‘Guidelines for Emigrants Going to America and Polish-English Conversations’ by Józef Okołowicz, 1911, photo: National Library Polona

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The Passenger Hall was connected on its east side to the elongated two-story Transit Warehouse. The latter contained warehouses and baggage rooms, and on the first floor there were also ticket offices and rooms for passenger control and check-in. Both floors of this part of the building were connected by ramps and freight elevators. The first floor was also equipped with a system of ramps and footbridges that enabled passengers to move directly to the decks of ships from the hall’s interior. This part of the station gained a more ‘industrial’ appearance: it no longer had to fulfil a representative function, so solutions more akin to engineering were used.

The structure of the building was based on reinforced concrete columns and ceiling beams, with the 120-metre building divided into identical segments, each of which was covered with a shell vault. These vaults were an innovation: the Dyckerhoff & Widmann company specialised in modern vault structures (the studio had previously worked on the vault of Centennial Hall in Wrocław, for example), and for the Gdynia station they used an innovative form of concrete shell little-seen at the time.

A housing estate for the departing

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Hotel Emigracyjny in Gdynia, 1930-1939, photo: Henryk Poddębski / National Library Polona

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The Maritime Station officially opened on 8th December 1933 during the ceremony consecrating Gdynia’s port, which itself coincided with the fifteenth anniversary of Poland regaining independence. Significant and symbolic, it was not the only facility in the young port city that was built for the needs of emigrants. A few years earlier in 1929, construction of the so-called Emigration Stage, also known as the Emigration Camp, began in the forested district of Grabówek. These facilities were connected to the Maritime Station in the port by a railway line called ‘The Track to America’.

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Emigration Camp in Gdynia, 1937, photo: NAC / https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl

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A complex of 20 buildings was planned for an area of eight hectares divided into zones. The two most important were the ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’ parts. In the former, emigrants were to undergo sanitary and hygiene procedures, medical examinations and vaccinations. The latter was to consist of hotel and administrative buildings used to handle formalities related to departure. In addition to these basic functions, the Emigration Stage was meant to include a chapel, a synagogue, a reading room, a library, lecture and theatre halls, a playroom and a nursery. Between the buildings would be a park with recreation areas, sports fields, tennis courts and playgrounds. The complex was designed at the height of emigration, hence the scale of the investment was vast – the ‘dirty’ part was to handle up to 700 people a day, the ‘clean’ part 1,300.

However, these plans went put asunder when facing reality: the global economic crisis and Poland’s subsequent economic decline and reduced levels of emigration all meant construction work was suspended. By 1935, just three of the planned twenty buildings had been completed. These managed to serve their original function for some time, catering to those who were going on long journeys. In September 1939, the buildings became occupied by the Land Coastal Defence – it would later house prisoners of war and then the headquarters of the Polish Red Cross. In 1947, the buildings were taken over by the Polish Army, which still manages the area to this day.

Hygienic Modernism

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The Emigration Camp in Gdynia, external view of the centre for people preparing to go abroad (original description on the back of the photograph ‘Emigration Camp’, 1936, photo: NAC / https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/ )

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The architecture of the Emigration Stage in Grabówek was designed by Adam Kuncewicz (author of the 1925 Gdynia expansion plan) and Adam Paprocki. The duo wanted forms that were as rational and functional as they were modern. They enclosed the spaces for serving emigrants in three-storey building-pavilions stretched horizontally along the hillside and the forest wall. Deprived of detail, these buildings with their flat roofs and horizontal strips of windows were built from grey cement brick. The administrative and dining building, built on a trapezoid plan, received a slightly more elaborate structure with an internal courtyard, glazed staircases and windows of various shapes and sizes. However, it also gained smooth facades made of grey brick and an austere appearance. All the buildings of the Emigration Stage were maintained in the most austere varieties of modernism, dominated by pragmatism and functionality. This economical architecture was also seen as more hygienic.

According to statistics from the Interwar period, over 2 million people left Poland in the years 1918 to 1938, of which 1.25 million went to European countries and almost 800,000 overseas (it is estimated that a million or so returned to Poland at later points). The largest number of people left Poland in the years 1926 to 1930, but in the face of the later global economic crisis it became increasingly difficult to leave and find work, and foreign countries developed a reluctance towards immigrants.

In May 2015, the Emigration Museum opened in the Maritime Station’s former building after careful renovation and adaptation for new purposes. The institution collects, documents and researches the fates of Polish emigrants, preserving the memory of their often difficult life choices in a place from which thousands of them set off on a journey for a better fate.

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Emigration Museum in Gdynia, photo: Bogna Kociumbas

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_{Sources: ‘Gdynia Obiecana: Miasto, Modernizm, Modernizacja 1920-1939’ by Grzegorz Piątek, Wydawnictwo W.A.B., Warsaw 2022; ‘Polityka migracyjna II Rzeczpospolitej’ by Anna Kicinger, Central European Forum For Migration Research (Środkowoeuropejskie Forum Badań Migracyjnych), in: CEFMR Working Paper 2005, nr 4; ‘Dworzec Morski w Gdyni – historia i architektura na tle wybranych budynków morskich terminali pasażerskich w Europie",’ by Szymon Jocek of the Emigration Museum in Gdynia, in: ‘Porta Aurea’, ‘Rocznik Instytutu Historii Sztuki Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego’, 2019, nr 18; ‘Etap Emigracyjny w Gdyni’ by Anna Posłuszna of the National Museum in Kraków, a paper delivered during the conference ‘Modernizm w Europie - Modernizm w Gdyni: Architektura XX Wieku i Jej Waloryzacja’, 2014.}

Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar

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