The city of Gdynia
The transformation of a fishing village into a modern port city was the biggest undertaking of the II Republic of Poland. The construction of Gdynia was a financial, political, urbanistic and logistical challenge. In 1921, when the work started, Gdynia had only 1268 inhabitants; five years later, the number rose to 12,000 and in 1939, to 127,000.
Gdynia is a modernist city, designed in the 1920s in compliance with the rules of the style that was the most popular at that time. Alongside the wide avenues, white buildings were constructed, with horizontal lines of windows and rounded corners – these forms were considered the most modern at that time, and also fit the gravity of public institutions.
Even today, these buildings house, amongst others, the office building of the Social Insurance Institution (designed by Roman Piotrowski), the residential building of the BGK Pension Fund (designed by Stanisław Ziołowski), the Dom Żeglarza Polskiego (the Polish Sailors’ Home, designed by Bohdan Damięcki and Tadeusz Sieczkowski), and the District Court (designed by Zygmunt Karpiński, Tadeusz Sieczkowski and Roman Sołtyński). There are also many private buildings in this style.