The monumental socialist realist urban design, although only partly implemented, is a relic of a time when it seemed possible to merge the functions of a workers’ housing estate with metropolitan development befitting a capital city.
[...] One of the most important issues of the six-year plan, to which our party organisation must pay particular attention, is the construction of new workers’ housing estates and residential buildings. [...] Areas that were previously accessible only to the wealthy residents of Warsaw will now be designated for workers’ housing estates, and workers’ flats will be built in the city centre along the East-West Route and Marszałkowska (Marshal) Street
– announced Bolesław Bierut in his speech titled ‘The Six-Year Plan for the Reconstruction of Warsaw’, delivered on 3 July 1949. At the very moment he was uttering these words, housing estates were already being built in the districts of Koło, Mokotów, Mirów, Muranów, and Młynów. The last three were constructed along the East-West Route [an almost 7 km long thoroughfare connecting the eastern and western part of the city, going through the historic city centre, ed.], which opened two weeks after Bierut’s speech. While the housing estates in Młynów and Mirów were typical small-scale residential developments, the ‘introduction of workers’ housing into the city centre’ needed to take on a more spectacular form.
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General view from Marszałkowska Street. Visible in the frame are piles of bricks, a cart, and propaganda slogans, including ‘Long live Comrade Stalin, leader and standard-bearer of peace’, ‘Long live the six-year plan’, 1950, photo: The Photographic Archive of Stefan Rassalski / National Digital Archives NAC / www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl
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The idea for developing the Marszałkowska Residential District (MDM) began to take shape in January 1950. However, the Warsaw Reconstruction Office (BOS) had already planned the construction of new buildings along Marszałkowska Street: the thoroughfare had long been the city’s main artery, and restoring it after war damage was a crucial part of the Office’s work. Furthermore, visions of how the street might look in the future were already being devised during the occupation; Maciej Nowicki sketched two-level spaces where pedestrians, separated from moving vehicles, could enjoy modern buildings suitable for the city centre location.
However, modernist visions of the city centre were abandoned when socialist realism was adopted in Poland in June 1949.
Marszałkowska Residential District (MDM). Visible in the photo are buildings in Śródmieście (Downtown), including Constitution Square, seen from Śniadeckich Street towards the north-east, aerial photograph, 1961-1964; photo: The Photographic Archive of Zbyszek Siemaszko / National Digital Archives NAC / www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl
The new ideology did not provide specific guidelines on how buildings should be designed (the slogan ‘socialist in content, national in form’, used in relation to architecture, is, after all, quite broad). However, it was clear that new buildings, particularly those erected in the city centre, needed to stand out in terms of both architecture and urban planning. Consequently, the workers’ housing development in Marszałkowska Street, announced by Bierut in the ‘Six-Year Plan for the Reconstruction of Warsaw’, became a key project aimed at permanently transforming that part of the city. The goal was to demonstrate that the new authorities, in this new era, were granting workers and employees the prestigious city centre spaces that had previously been out of reach for them, thus breaking away from what was portrayed as the ‘capitalist’ tradition of their ‘exclusivity’. The new development was meant to contrast with what Bierut described as ‘a city built haphazardly, with fantastically overpopulated and neglected working-class districts and comfortably equipped and furnished colonies of the wealthy’.
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Construction of a block of flats at 6 Constitution Square. Visible on the right are a pre-war tenement house at 50 Marszałkowska Street and a bus, 1951, photo: The Photographic Archive of Stefan Rassalski / National Digital Archives NAC / www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl
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Chosen as the site for the Marszałkowska Residential District was the southern end of the artery that traverses the centre of the capital, which, before the war, was mainly lined with tenement houses. The socialist realist housing estate was also intended to partly complement the 18th-century development on the so-called Stanisław Axis, an urban layout that includes, among others, the Politechniki (Technical University) Square, Zbawiciela (Saviour) Square, Na Rozdrożu (Crossroads) Square, Unii Lubelskiej (Union of Lublin) Square, and Trzech Krzyży (Three Crosses) Square. The team responsible for designing this vast area was formed in March 1950. It was named ‘MDM Studio’, and its management was entrusted to architects who, a few months earlier, had completed their work on the design and construction of the East-West Route. The architects themselves mentioned that the design of MDM was assigned to them as a ‘reward’ for the success of the route running from east to west of the capital, along with the accompanying buildings. The head of the MDM Studio was Jan Knothe, collaborating with Józef Sigalin and Zygmunt Stępiński. In July 1950, in the monthly magazine Architektura (Architecture), the architects listed the main premises of the project:
‘Opening of the MDM’, bas-relief on the southern wall of the block in Waryńskiego Street, Warsaw, photo: History Meeting House
1. A decisive move away from reconstruction and restoration, even in the most inventive sense, towards creating an entirely new city centre.
2. Commencing the construction of the city centre in its traditionally and currently most vibrant area, and shaping the centre not with individual buildings but with an entire metropolitan district that is being simultaneously designed and developed.
3. Shifting from building housing estates to urban development, transitioning from constructing estates within cities to developing specific parts of cities.
4. The introduction of residential buildings as the fabric of the metropolitan centre was achieved by integrating residential and commercial functions within each individual building. This approach aims not only to meet residential needs but also to support the operation of the city centre, mainly through a network of socialist trade, mass catering, and entertainment.
The Marszałkowska Residential District was also intended to become a stylistic model to be emulated, embodying theideal of socialist realist urban planning in a metropolitan style—functional yet monumental. integrating residential and symbolic functions as a ‘new city centre’. It was meant to be an impressive space that responded to the needs of its era and the new ideology. In Architecture, members of the MDM Studio enumerated their main objectives, which included:
harmoniously combining the requirements of good housing with the demands of big-city life, [...] finding the suitable architectural form for the new complex socialist content of the house, street, square, district, part of the city, for the new metropolitan scale, [...] incorporating the architecture of residential buildings into the methods employed to create a metropolitan and monumental layout, [...] raising the national forms of Warsaw architecture to a scale far beyond that from which the models could be drawn.
The original design of the Marszałkowska Residential District covered a large area, spanning almost the entire southern part of the city centre, from the areas south of Unii Lubelskiej Square all the way up to Wilcza Street in the north, including all the blocks and squares east and west of Marszałkowska Street. It was intended to house 45,000 residents and include 22 kindergartens, 11 schools, nine health centres, several cinemas, theatres, community centres, shops, a town hall, a market hall, and a Fast Urban Railway station. Financial shortfalls and the rejection of socialist realist ideas in 1956 meant that not all elements of the plan could be realised. Despite this, MDM did take on its intended form.
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MDM in Warsaw, view of Constitution Square from Zbawiciela Square, photo: History Meeting House / www.dsh.waw.pl
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The district was designed along two axes: Marszałkowska Street and Stanisław Axis; the central point of the layout was a long, wide square, with its frontages built first. Constitution Square features prominent elements, highlighted not only by its size but also by its buildings, which are taller than those in the surrounding area and feature an arcaded design. Additionally, it boasts ornamental paving and grand candelabras at each end. The houses around the square, following the principle of architecture ‘national in form’, were inspired by Warsaw’s monuments from the classicist and Empire periods: they feature steps leading up to high, arcaded socle ground floors, multi-storey structures, and decorative finials such as balustrades or attics. Elaborate cornices, window frames, balcony balustrades, and rustications are complemented by decorative details: bas-reliefs, mosaics, sgraffito, and wrought-iron gates. Constitution Square was officially opened on 22 July 1952. Subsequently, houses were constructed along Marszałkowska Street towards the south, leading to the Unii Lubelskiej Square. Though simpler than those in the main square, they still boast ornamental details: elaborate cornices, attics, and baluster railings.
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Constitution Square, Warsaw, 1954, Zbyszko Siemaszko / FORUM, photo: History Meeting House
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Plac Konstytucji, Warszawa, 1954, Zbyszko Siemaszko/FORUM., fot. Dom Spotkań z Historią
By the mid-1950s, it was already clear that the idea of merging workers’ housing with monumental architectural forms was unfeasible. Large, ornate, embellished, stone-faced buildings were simply too expensive to construct. They also had another disadvantage: their construction took a long time, and the housing needs of the rapidly growing city of Warsaw were increasing. However, before the political thaw in October 1956 finally put the doctrine of socialist realism to an end, more MDM residential buildings were erected. The Latawiec housing estate – sometimes called MDM III because it was built during the third phase of the district’s development – stands out from the rest. Running along Wyzwolenia (Liberation) Avenue, between Na Rozdrożu Square and Zbawiciela Square, the estate was built between 1955 and 1957 according to a design by Eleonora Sekrecka. Arranged in a frontage, pierced by high passageways, the seven-storey buildings no longer bear the hallmarks of socialist realist aesthetics, nor do they feature the architectural details of Marszałkowska Street. Instead, they boast high mansard roofs, two-storey plinths, and their façades are veneered with brick. Their forms are reminiscent of the late 19th-century buildings in the Place des Vosges in Paris.
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Constitution Square, photo: Tomasz Jastrzębowski / Reporter / East News
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Although the Marszałkowska Residential District was not fully realised according to the ambitions of its architects and ideologists, it became a model for similar projects in other cities. Even if smaller and more modest in scale, other residential developments with a city centre character followed. These included the Kościuszko Residential District in Wrocław, the Grunwaldzka Residential District in Gdańsk, the residential area around Wolności (Liberty) Square in Kielce, and the Grunwaldzkie Housing Estate in Bielsko-Biała. The Praga II Housing Estate, built between 1949 and 1955 and based on a design by Jerzy Gieysztor and Jerzy Kumelowski around Haller Square (then Julian Leński Square), was also known as the ‘MDM of Praga’. A total of 110 residential buildings (with the tallest and most elaborately decorated ones situated directly beside the square) were constructed to accommodate factory workers in Żerań.
In the year 2015, the Marszałkowska Residential District was entered into the Registry of Cultural Property. It is considered the second most significant example of socialist realism in Warsaw after the Palace of Culture and Science.
Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur
