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Jacek Radziewicz-Winnicki - Architektura Gliwic... 259

Jacek Radziewicz-Winnicki

GLIWICE ARCHITECTURE AND ITS HISTORICAL ALTERNATIONS UP TO 1945

Summary

Gliwice up to these days has retained the urban shape formed in medieval times, in a form of an oval typical for Silesian cities. The historical nets of streets and the square central market sąuare have been retained. Conversely the current image of the oldest part of the dty - the medieval core, best portrays the changes the city has undergone sińce its location in the second half of the 13* century. Still, there retained the most important structures, such as: the Ali Saints' Parish Church in an essentially preserved gothic form, the town hall rebuilt in the classical epoch and fragments of a ring of the late gothic town's defen-sive walls.

At the end of the 13* century, in the dosest surroundings of the medieval city, in the Szobiszowice village a parish church of St. Bartholomew was erected on the Templars' initiative, situated by the historical route to the castellan Toszek. A little later, in the 16* century St. Barbara's Church was built in the Bytom suburbs, and in 1447 St. George's Church was erected in the Ostropa village. During the 16* and 17* centuries the monastery church of the Holy Cross's Elevation was built, which witnessed the march of king Jan III Sobieski's army to relieve a besieged Vienna in 1683. The already mentioned gothic - renais-sance town hall in the middle of the market sąuare was thoroughly reconstructed in a strict classical form during the Prussian rule.

It has to be added that the architecture of the tum of the 18* and 19* centuries, imposed by the Capital Berlin, mainly represented the style of a famous architect, Carl Friedrich Schinkel and a royal court archi-tect, Friedrich August Stiller. In such a convention, the St. Barbara's Church - primarily a Protestant church - at the Dworcowa Street was erected in the period 1855-1859 according to Friedrich August Stuler's design in a style called Rundbogenstil in Germany. The best representations, in terms of the form and proportion of the 19* century historism are: the current St. Peter and PauTs cathedral church, built in 1896-1900 according to the design of aVienna architect, Hugon Brunon Heer, and a new St. Bartholom-ew's parish Church in the Szobiszowice village , erected in 1907-1911 according to Ludwig Schneider design. The construction authorities of that time had the preference for Neo-Gothic and Neo-Roman styles and it was recommended to use these medieval styles to construct sacral edifices, as well as some public fadhties buildings, such as the former Maschinenbau und Hiittenschule edifice, currently the Fac-ulty of Chemistry in the Silesian University of Technology. The Main Post Office at the Dolnych Wałów Street was built in 1905 in a similar omamental style.

At the end of the 19th century a new composition axis was hinged of city planning, which allowed to link the old downtown to a newly built railway station - the contemporary Zwycięstwa Street. Along this attraclive Street soon magnificent tenement houses and public facility edifices were constructed, which contributed to a creation of a representative commercial Street in the city. The architecture of the buildings mostly comes from the last years of the 19* century and the initial years of the 20* century and it represents various styles, such as historism, eclectism and the currently prevailing modemism. The „Sei-denhaus - Weichmann" department storę, erected in 1921-1923 according to the Erich MendelssołuTs project, is unąuestionably of an extraordinary architectonic rank. In this period, while the industry was advancing, numerous workmen's housing estates with semi-detached or row houses of simple and func-tional architecture were built within the dty borders. The impressive pubhc buildings of attractive modem forms, which represented modemarchitecture trends, were constructed at the end of 1920s and in the beginning of the 1930s. Expressionism, as a type of an avantguard interwar period modernism of particu-