Koszary Miejskiej Straży Pożarnej w Krakowie

Abstract

THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE MUNICIPAL FIRE BRIGADE IN KRAKOW

The building housing the headquarters of the Kraków fire brigade situated at 19 Westerplatte St was erected in 1879. It was designed by Maciej Moraczewski(1840–1928), the then director of the municipal construction department. The construction itself took about a year and was preceded by an intensive preparatory process which included the selection of an optimal location for the facility, preparation of a functional plan, and preliminary works on the architectural design. The aforementioned preliminary works commenced in 1874, which is when the City Council, having considered several alternative locations, decided that the headquarters of the Kraków fire brigade would be situated in the Wesoła district. By choosing this particular location for the new municipal investment city councillors hoped to revitalize this part of Kraków and turn it into an attractive, well organized urban space (there was a haphazard marketplace in the immediate vicinity of the site on which the headquarters of the fire brigade was built, which gave the entire area a rather chaotic character). All of these circumstances and considerations resulted in the fact that Kraków’s Municipal Fire Brigade gained a permanent headquarters facility which has been used by Kraków firemen ever since. The present form of the building is the final result of numerous modernizations which the facility has undergone in the course of its 130-year-old history. However, most of these innovations concerned the buildings at the back of the premises, while the main building facing the street (featuring the characteristic tower) was altered only to a very limited degree and, furthermore, it was restored to its former splendour by the renovation works carried out in the period 1996–2000. Th e neo-Gothic architectural “costume” of this building, including the easily recognizable borrowings from Kraków’s historical defensive structures, harmonizes perfectly with its function as a fire station. After all, at the time when the building was designed and erected, it was not unusual for firemen to be called by the name of “the knights of St Florian”.