https://lia4.lvivcenter.org/en/themes/crossroads-of-empire/Crossroads of Empire
Crossroads of Empire
ID:
117
This theme is a part of an interdisciplinary seminar for students at Stetson University (USA) focusing on "diversity". It integrates different buildings and sites and explores the difficulty of acknowledging, and reckoning with the multiple contested narratives of a place, city, or country.
Story
This is an interdisciplinary seminar for students at Stetson University first taught in spring 2015, now taught for the second time in 2016. This seminar is one of a selection of courses for juniors (third-year) students focusing on "values"; our seminar's value is "diversity." This is a difficult and vague concept, but for us it means exploring the difficulty of including, acknowledging, and reckoning with the multiple contested narratives of a place, city, region, or country. Florida itself is a quintessential multi-ethnic space of many narratives: the legacies of Spanish, British, and American colonialism run deep with peoples of many ethnic and national belongings calling the state home.
And so too, Lviv. This semester 14 Floridians are embarking on a journey to Eastern Europe. They are using the LIA, Lviv Interactive Map, to come to understand and know a place foreign to them, the city of Lviv. This is an interdisciplinary seminar, with students majoring in history, biology, business, literature, and art. We're learning about many different buildings in the city, from cemeteries, to museums, to parks, to monuments, and studying how hard it is to incorporate multiple narratives in one story of place.
The Zwangsarbeitslager-Lemberg (ZAL-L) or The Janowska Camp (vul. Shevchenka)
Fountain with a sculpture figure of Neptune (Pl. Rynok)
Stetson University is a private university founded in 1883 located in the small town of Deland, Florida. The University’s historic main campus enrolls more than 2,400 students in undergraduate liberal arts and professional programs in the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Business Administration, and the School of Music. Florida’s oldest private institution of higher learning, Stetson has regularly been ranked among the best regional universities in the Southeast.
The current building of the Lviv city hall was built in the years 1827-1835. The project was designed by architects Alois Wondraszka, Jerzy Glogowski, Joseph Markl, and Franz Trescher. In 1849-1851, after a fire, a reconstruction was carried out under a project by Johann Salzmann. The massive building is situated at the center of the Rynok square; it has four symmetrical Neo-Classicist façades. Its tower, which is square in plan, belongs to the most noticeable accents of Lviv’s architectural panorama and is one of the visual symbols of the city. The style of the building can be considered a typical one for the Austrian administration buildings of the 1830-1840s. The city hall is the administrative center of the city, the Lviv City Council is located there.
The Lviv
State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater was built in 1897-1900 under a project designed by
architect Zygmunt Gorgolewski.
The building is erected in historicist style and influenced by the
so-called
Vienna Neo-Renaissance. The monumental theater
building has
occupied a key position in the architectural ensemble of the city’s main avenue
created in the late 19th – early 20th century.
The synagogue was constructed in Renaissance style in 1582-1595 from brick and stone by architect Paweł Szczęśliwy (Pavlo Shchaslyvyi) and funded by the wealthy Nachmanowicz family. The synagogue would have been one of the oldest within the current borders of Ukraine. Yet in August 1941, all its religious objects were plundered and in 1943 it was demolished by explosives by the Nazis. The ruins that remain today, long neglected but undergoing some preservation efforts recently, are a symbol of the tragedy of Lviv’s Jews.
The former Galician Sejm building (now the main building of the Lviv National Ivan Franko University) was constructed in 1877-1881 under a project designed by architect Juliusz Hochberger. The monumental Sejm building belongs to the Historicist style influenced by the Vienna Neo-Renaissance architecture of the second half of the 19th century; it is notable for its rich sculpture and ornamental decorations.
The Prospect Svobody Promenade –
formerly, the Hetman Ramparts – was laid in on top of the western section of
the historic defensive fortifications that ringed Lviv. The walls were pulled
down sometime around 1776 and put into public service of the city. In the first
half of the 19th century, parallel streets were established on the
eastern and western banks of the Poltva River, and landscaped in rows of
poplar; the streets would one day become the boulevard that is Prospect
Svobody. In the late 1880s, arched bridges spanned the gap between Maryatska
Square (currently, Mickiewicz Square) and Golukhovska Square (currently,
Torhova Square). Between 1888-1890, under the direction of Arnold Röhring, the
area enclosing the underground river channel was planted in trees and
flowerbeds.
Vysoky Zamok municipal park sits
north of the city center, astride Lviv Castle Hill. Both park and hill take
their name from the ruined fortress on the territory. Opened in 1835, the
park’s landscaped hillsides are crisscrossed by a network of trails through
lower and upper terraces. In the second half of the 19th century, an
artificial mound was erected on the upper terrace as a marker of the Union of
Lublin, and topped by a scenic viewpoint. A walkway beneath stands of ash and
chestnut trees beautify the lower terrace.
A standout feature of Teatralna Street is the Natural History Museum, which provides an excellent example of early neoclassicism in Lviv’s residential architectural ensemble. Built at the close of the 18th century by an unknown architect, though the structure is most likely the work of Pierre Denis Gibaut. The building is associated with the Dzieduszycki clan, celebrated for its civic activism and scholarly pursuits. The museum’s founder – Count Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki – was a noted zoologist, ethnographer, archeologist, and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Cracow (ca. 1881). He applied the bulk of his income from his properties to the acquisition of articles for exhibition and the maintenance of the museum. Lviv’s State Natural History Museum is among Europe’s oldest and boasts one of the finest natural history collections on the continent. The palace is a registered national landmark – the decision taken by the 442nd session of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic Council of Ministers on 6 September 1979, Decree No. 1263.
The Great Maximillian Tower No. 2 is a double-level casemate artillery tower with a cellar and a flat terrace, built of unplastered red brick. Constructed as a regular heptadecagon with a circular internal courtyard by an unknown architect on Kalicha Hill. The tower's chief function was control of the city in case of an uprising, and defense of the Citadel's eastern wing. Beginning in early July 1941, the Nazi troops dislocated a concentration camp for prisoners of war in the Citadel, the so-called Stalag 328. According to testimony from Soviet prisoners of war, Tower No. 2 held the interrogation room and the death row cell. Beginning in 1980 the tower and the territory was used as storehouses by the Electron company. Currently (2009), the tower is being used as a hotel "Citadel Inn".
Lychakivsky (Lychakiv) cemetery is situated close to Mechnykova street; its territory occupies the Lychakiv plateau and its vicinities. As for today, this is the oldest preserved cemetery in Lviv which was officially opened in 1786. It is one of the best known European necropolises containing a lot of artistic monuments. The cemetery has been declared a historical, archaeological and artistic monument of national significance. There one can see the graves of many prominent persons, military burial places belonging to the times of the First and Second World Wars etc.
The sports premises are
located in the former Racławice Panorama building, which
stands close to the main alley of Stryiskyi Park's upper terrace. It was
constructed in 1893 according to
the design of architect Ludwik Baldwin-Ramułt, and reconstructed in 1908. In
1944 during the bombardment of Lviv, the building was severely damaged. The
panorama was conserved, dismantled and kept in chests placed in the Bernardine
monastery until 1946 when it was moved to Wrocław, Poland. The building was in
derelict state until 1960s, when it was repaired and adapted for the needs of
Lviv Polytechnic sports department.
The monument to the national
Polish poet was opened on 30 October 1904. Its construction
was carried out from late 1903 under the supervision
of Alfred Zachariewicz and Józef Sosnowski. The author of
the project, who won an
architectural competition, was Antoni Popiel, a famous sculptor. Earlier,
there was a figure of the Virgin Mary on its
place.
A three-storied building was
constructed in 1906 under a project developed at the bureau of Ivan
Levynskyi (Jan Lewiński) as an apartment house
belonging to Leon Stauber, an entrepreneur.
The principal façade was designed by
architect Tadeusz Obmiński. This ornamental
Secession style building is one of the best
examples of this style in Lviv
and has been listed as an architectural monument (protection
number 6). Today, much of it is
occupied by the Center for Urban
History of East Central Europe.
The Nativity of the Holy Virgin Church is located in the center of the biggest
socialistic residential district of Lviv – Sykhiv – and constitutes the main
iconic building forming its image. The building was constructed in 1995-2001 according to the design of Radoslav
Zuk, a Canadian architect of Ukrainian origin. Today it is one of the most
distinguished religious buildings constructed in Ukraine after it gained its
independence. The design reflects the Byzantine tradition interpreted
in a modern way.
The building of former Jewish hospital was designed by architect Kazimierz Mokłowski and constructed in 1898-1901. The construction costs were covered by Maurycy Lazarus's foundation. The building is located in the northwestern part of the city, on a slope. It is a monumental free-standing structure dominating both vul. Rappaporta and vul. Leontovycha, its design features Historicist Moorish Revival style. In 1902 a brick fence surrounding its territory was constructed, this project was designed by architect Władysław Hodowski. Today the building is used by the Maternity Department of the 3rd Municipal Clinical Hospital.
The Zwangsarbeitslager-Lemberg
(ZAL-L) was established immediately adjacent to the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke
(DAW) in early 1942. In addition to forced labor, the camp operated as a
dedicated killing site with thousands of Jews and the transit site to Bełżec
and Sobibor extermination centers. It was liquidated in July 1944.
According to historian Yuri Biriuliov, among the "best work of Hartman Witwer (1774-1825) are ... the four stone statues made out of limestone and located at the wells on Market Square – they embodied the allegory of earth (the sculptures of Diana and Adonis) and water (the sculptures of Neptune and Amphitrite). The Market Square figures were created some time between 1810 and 1814, and are mentioned in original sources first in 1815, when the city council passed a resolution forbidding damage to the sculptures during the celebration of the traditional Ukrainian "Jordan" holiday ([the celebration of the Baptism of Jesus, and] the sanctification of water)." On the western side of the square are fountains with the figures of Neptune (the southwestern corner) and Amphitrite (the northwestern corner). On the eastern side are fountains with the figures of Adonis (northeast) and Diana (southeast side).
