Gdynia at 100: The City’s Most Iconic Modernist Buildings

gdynia_widok_gettyimages-1251197601.jpg, default, Gdynia, photo: Sebastian Góra / Getty Images

On 10th February 1926, Gdynia was officially granted city rights. This symbolic moment transformed a small fishing village into a modern metropolis. To mark the 100th anniversary of this event, come with us on a walk through the history written into Gdynia’s architecture.

In the Maritime and River League’s 1926 manual, Gdynia appeared in chapter four under ‘Singular Sites on the Coast’. The construction of a new port and a modern city was a major political event at the time. The guide noted:

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By making Gdańsk [Danzig at the time] a Free City, Poland was restricted in its use of the port. We experienced the adverse effects of this in 1920, during the Bolshevik invasion. It became clear how vital unhindered access to the sea is for Poland’s existence. On 23rd September 1922, the Sejm, understanding and having learned from experience, voted to build a trade and military port in Gdynia. Thanks to this momentous decision, Poland has gained a free gateway to the wide world.

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Gdynia, photo: Getty Images

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Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Poland gained 147 km of Baltic coastline (74 km of the Hel Peninsula, 24 km of open sea and 49 km of the Bay of Puck). Giving Poland a coast had immense strategic, defensive, and economic significance, and it soon became clear that its use needed to be maximised. But building a port in Gdynia wasn’t an immediately obvious choice. The government considered several locations, including Tczew and Puck. However, engineer Tadeusz Wenda, after in-depth inspection of each location, determined in 1920 that the lowland between Gdynia and Oksywie was the most suitable. In 1921, the first shovel hit the ground in a village of just 1,268 people, and five years later, it became a city of around 10,000. By 1936, the population had exploded to 102,000.

Building Gdynia up was a multidimensional process. The port and its technical infrastructure were key, but just behind was the development of a dynamic city that would attract people from all over Poland to live and work there. Shaping the ‘civilian’ part of Gdynia had two faces: the official, ‘propaganda’ face – documented by impressive modernist edifices and luxury housing – and a hidden one, found in the poverty and slums where the lower classes lived due to a lack of affordable housing.

The highs and lows of Gdynia’s construction are documented in Grzegorz Piątek’s book Gdynia Obiecana: Miasto, Modernizm, Modernizacja 1920-1939 (Promised Gdynia: The City, Modernism & Modernisation 1920-1939), who points out not only its unprecedented scale and speed when building modern city spaces, but also the social problems resulting from how complicated and accelerated it was.

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Gdynia, photo: Getty Images

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A hundred years after these events, Gdynia now tops the rankings of the best places to live in Poland, and its interwar architecture is a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage status. Since 2015, the city centre has been designated a ‘Monument to History’, the highest level of protection granted by the Polish government. Even amid the controversies and social challenges that arose, one cannot help but appreciate the architecture we have today. In the 1920s and 1930s, by reaching for modernist forms, they highlighted the newness and progressiveness of the newly reborn Poland. Next to Katowice, Gdynia is the second-largest Polish city with such a rich collection of interwar modernist buildings. But in the capital of Upper Silesia, those modernist innovations were made by private investors, while Gdynia’s bravest forms mostly appeared in public buildings. This means they are still easily accessible to the public today. A hundred years on, they are still worth visiting.

The ZUS Building

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The ZUS / PLO / City Council building, photo: Sebastian Góra / Getty Images

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Along the main street of the new city – known today as 10 Lutego – the headquarters of the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) was erected between 1935 and 1936. For an institution tasked with safeguarding the future of citizens within a state newly reborn after regaining independence, the headquarters had to be suitably grand. This seven-story edifice was designed in an L-shape and located at the intersection of two streets.

The architect, Roman Piotrowski, utilised the location with great intent, turning the building’s corner into its signature feature. Tall, slender and rounded, and punctuated by uniform bands of windows, it brings to mind the stern of a ship cutting through the waves.

This was entirely intentional: in Gdynia, there was a distinct affinity for this specific brand of modernism, inspired by naval and maritime architecture – a genuine product of the age of steam and electricity. The glazed and slightly undercut ground floor lends a sense of weightlessness to the massive structure, while the white facades highlight its modern character.

Following World War II, the building served as the headquarters for Polish Ocean Lines (Polskie Linie Oceaniczne). Today, it houses a branch of Gdynia City Hall, the City Information Office and the Gdynia Business Support Centre.

2. The Bankowiec (Banker’s House)

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Residential Building of the BGK Pension Fund, photo: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Poland

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This is the largest residential building constructed in Gdynia during the interwar years. Known as the Apartment House of the Pension Fund of the National Economic Bank (BGK), it was built with the officials that the new city so desperately needed in mind. Constructed between 1935 and 1938 according to a design by Stanisław Ziołowski, it employed the most innovative reinforced concrete techniques of the time.

To emphasise the building’s style and elegance, however, its facades were finished with Pińczów limestone slabs and high-quality plaster. Materials that are no less luxurious can still be seen inside today – terracotta floors, marble wall cladding, stone balustrades, oak parquet and brass handles have all been preserved. This massive edifice – its longer facade measuring a staggering 90 metres – was a luxury apartment complex that even featured its own underground garage. It did not mimic decorative city palaces – instead, it has a raw silhouette devoid of detail, proving that the simplicity of modernism can also take a luxurious form.

3. The Polish Sailor’s House (Dom Żeglarza Polskiego)

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Polish Sailors’ House, Navigation Faculty of the Maritime University, photo: Konrad Maćkowiak / https://www.gdynia.pl

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Gdynia was a port city, so it is no surprise that facilities related to the sea were also built there. The Sailor’s House, situated right by the water at the central point of the Southern Pier, was intended to be the heart of Polish sailing. It housed meeting halls, club rooms and an indoor swimming pool.

This modernist building was designed in 1938-1939 by Bohdan Damięcki and Tadeusz Sieczkowski, who utilised shapes inspired by maritime forms. The architects made the building’s hallmark a rounded bay window topped with a terrace and a small roof, resembling a ship’s captain’s bridge. The outbreak of World War II thwarted the plans of the building’s originators, and the sailors never had the chance to move in. Today, the facility serves as the headquarters of the Faculty of Navigation at the Maritime University. In the 1970s, a planetarium building was added to the complex.

4. The Maritime Terminal (Dworzec Morski)

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The Maritime Terminal, currently the Emigration Museum, photo: Leszek Żurek / Emigration Museum in Gdynia

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Although the port in Gdynia was built primarily for cargo, it also served passenger traffic from the beginning, including emigrants – Poles leaving the country to live elsewhere (between 1918 and 1938, over 2 million people left Poland). This was where the ocean liners docked, allowing passengers to reach the United States or South American countries.

To meet the needs of those travelling by sea, a terminal was built at the port pier. It was ceremoniously opened on 8th December 1933, with attendees including General Józef Beck and the Minister of Industry and Trade, Ferdynand Zarzycki. The design was created in the Katowice branch of the Berlin engineering firm Dyckerhoff & Widmann. The architects opted for a reinforced concrete structure, designing a vast, three-story passenger hall at the front, followed by the elongated mass of the so-called transit warehouse (which was divided into several smaller segments, each topped with its own separate, barrel-shaped roof). During the interwar years, the terminal served thousands of ship passengers, but after World War II, it lost its original function. It was used, among other things, as the Harbour Master’s Office. In 2015, the Emigration Museum was opened within the building.

5. The District Court

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District Court building in Gdynia, photo: Ewa Jaros / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Poland

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The seats of authority and major offices are not only essential to a community’s functioning but also representative edifices that shape a city’s character and enhance its prestige. In 1936, the District Court building in Gdynia was erected, designed by Zbigniew Karpiński, Tadeusz Sieczkowski, and Roman Sołtyński.

As befits a city building its modern image, this facility also adopted an innovative form for its time. Even today, buildings related to the judiciary rarely abandon classical architectural elements – commonly associated with gravity and dignity, such as colonnades, elaborate porticos and massive cornices. The architects who designed the Gdynia court had that courage: they created a suitably monumental mass, although its impact comes from the harmony of its proportions and the austerity of its detail-free form. The main body of the building was designed on a circular segment plan, with a bay window pierced by narrow, high strips of windows that accentuated only the building’s entrance zone. This avant-garde mass stood out with its modern silhouette against other buildings of similar function being erected in Poland at the time.

6. The Post & Telegraph Office

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The Polish Post, Gdynia, photo:. Łukasz Dejnarowicz/Forum

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The Post and Telegraph Office (now the Main Post Office) is another public building essential for both residents and the image of a modern city. Modernist geometry was employed yet again, this time in a version utilising right angles (unlike many Gdynia buildings with rounded corners).

Built between 1928 and 1929, the building is the work of Warsaw architect Julian Puterman-Sadłowski, who collaborated with Antoni Miszewski. Situated at the intersection of two streets, the building originally had two wings of different heights – huge glazings broke their massiveness and austere shape with a characteristic, dense arrangement of window muntins. In 1938, the lower part of the post office was extended by two stories, bringing its height in line with the other wing.

7. Gdynia Railway Station

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Railway station, Gdynia, 1929, photo: National Library Polona

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Gdynia’s first railway station was opened as early as 1926. At that time, the railway was the most important means of transport, essential for the development of a city drawing crowds of new residents from all over the country. It was designed by Romuald Miller, who had been the head of the construction department of the Warsaw PKP Directorate since 1918 and was the author of many station buildings.

In his projects, the architect particularly favoured the ‘Manor House’ style, operating on the assumption that this national style was especially suited to buildings that were usually small in scale but high in significance. He gave such forms to the station in the newly emerging city, as he said himself, he incorporated inspirations from Kashubian architecture into the shapes of the Gdynia station.

A modernist train station — The Gdynia Główna railway station, photo: Dominik Sadowski / AW

However, the building was destroyed during World War II. Although it was provisionally rebuilt immediately after, it was replaced between 1950 and 1955 with a new structure. Wacław Tomaszewski prepared this design, and although the doctrine of Socialist Realism was in force at the time, the architect managed to incorporate many forms rooted in modernism into the building’s mass. An extraordinary treasure of the 1950s building, long forgotten and discovered during renovations between 2010 and 2012, is its interior decor. Now restored, it features large-format paintings on the ceilings and walls, along with wood and stone details.

8. Market Hall (Hala Targowa)

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Market Hall complex, Gdynia, photo: Bartosz Bańka / AW

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Between 1936 and 1938, a complex of commercial facilities was built in Gdynia. The Municipal Market Halls were designed by Jerzy Müller and Stefan Reychman, showcasing their engineering prowess. The construction of the main hall was made of reinforced concrete arches, 18 metres high with a span of 35 metres, with a glass roof stretched between them. This technically advanced work was widely described in the press – not only was the mastery of using the new material of reinforced concrete appreciated, but also the building’s functional plan, tailored to the needs of both sellers and customers.

9. YMCA

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The YMCA building in Gdynia, photo: https://www.gdynia.pl

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The YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) – an international organisation originally for young men, providing upbringing and education for youth – opened its branch in Poland in 1923. Its first honorary member was Marshal Józef Piłsudski. As the organisation grew, the Polish YMCA began building its headquarters – the first in Warsaw, the next in Łódź.

The Gdynia YMCA building was not constructed until 1948, but it was given forms that maintained a relationship with the pre-war modernism dominant in the city. Bohdan Damięcki and Stefan Koziński were responsible for the design. Although the building had to meet a series of standards imposed by the international organisation, it gained an original mass with an undercut corner raised on a slender pillar and a wall made of glass blocks (so-called ‘luksfery’). Its facades are diversified by diagonally laid brickwork and round windows resembling ship portholes.

10. Tenement houses

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Pręczkowski tenement building, Gdynia, photo: Jerzy Ochoński / PAP

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Alongside the modern, often innovative public buildings of the 1920s and 30s, Gdynia’s streets began to fill with bourgeois houses, rental tenements and residences for maritime entrepreneurs or merchants. Although each owner came from a different background, they all consistently chose modernist forms for their investments.

A 1930s modernist apartment building on a city street — The Albina & Marianna Orłowski building, photo: Jerzy Ochoński / PAP

This modern trend became the city’s hallmark in private construction as well. Many were maintained in the modernist style: the representative office-residential tenement of the Polish Timber Export Agency (Paged); the luxury tenement and department store of Albin and Marianna Orłowski, ‘Bon Marche’; the striking six-story house built for engineer Stanisław Pręczkowski; the tenement of merchants Izrael Reich and Wolf Birnbaum; of the lawyer Antoni Ogończyk-Bloch; of the timber industry entrepreneur Marian Krenski; and many other typically luxurious urban residential buildings in Gdynia. Geometric forms, flat roofs, horizontal window bands, rounded corners, sometimes undulating balconies or stone pillars supporting the ground floor with shops – this was the set of motifs used in various versions and variants by architects working for Gdynia’s wealthy new burghers.

_{Originally written in Polish, Feb 2026, translated by AZ, Feb 2026}

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