A New Life for the Gunpowder Tower

In the late nineteenth century, the Gunpowder Tower had every chance of being demolished. The building had long lost its defensive function and was perceived as an island of neglect and ruin in the midst of the representative boulevard of the Governor's Ramparts. The sixteenth-century structure was deemed unsuitable for new life. Thanks to the longstanding efforts of several people, first of all, the director of the Municipal Archive, Aleksander Czołowski, it was researched and reconsidered, and architects designed projects to adapt it to the needs of the archive. These plans remained on paper, but the perception of the building was changed forever.

The Gunpowder Tower is an important place on the map of contemporary Lviv (2022). It houses the regional branch of the Union of Architects of Ukraine, and serves as a venue for various cultural events. Today, it is traditionally called a "tower" (вежа), although researchers underscore that a roundel (башта) is the appropriate term.

The building's earliest history dating back to the sixteenth century, as well as its role in the system of Lviv fortifications, have been researched in detail (see Бевз, 2020). However, its unrealized adaptation for the needs of the Municipal Archive at the turn of the twentieth century has been only casually mentioned. This episode of the Tower's history lasted  little more than a decade. Yet it shows a few important things: how the idea of this building as a monument was shaped, the role that the professional milieu of historians and preservationists played in it. At the time, those were exclusively representatives of the Polish Historical School in Lviv, and it is possible to see how their values and ideological perspectives defined the proposed architectural designs. It also illustrates the problematic situation of the preservationists themselves as they lacked sufficient support from the city authorities and consequently were not able to implement their ideas.

After Lviv was incorporated in the Habsburg Empire in 1772, the process of demolition of the city fortifications began. Soon, only fragments remained of the ancient defensive structures. Gunpowder Tower was among these . The names baszta prochowa or saletrzana — namely, powder or saltpetre tower (roundel) — are common in nineteenth-century Polish-language sources. For a century it was owned by the Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) army, which used the building first for a similar purpose and later as a warehouse for military uniforms.

Probably the first mention of the building in the context of its being a valuable historical monument dates back to 1890. In the summer of that year, the Second Congress of Polish Historians was held in Lviv, followed by the Third Congress of Galician Monument Conservators, which took place literally on the following day. It was at the latter that Władysław Łoziński, a conservator for monuments in Lviv, voiced the idea that, due to the lack of museum spaces in the city, the Tower could be used for the following purpose: to house collections of archaeological exhibits. However, it had to be bought from the Army by the municipality first. The building did not become a museum, but the idea was soon picked up by Aleksander Czołowski. Still a doctoral student at the  Francis University  at that time, he was present at both events. At the history congress, he presented his report (supervised by Isydor Sharanevych/Izydor Szaraniewicz). At at the conservators' congress, Czołowski kept the minutes of the meetings — performing his role of the secretary of the recently founded Circle of Conservators of Eastern Galicia's Ancient Monuments.

One of the reports delivered at the congress of historians in 1890 concerned the need to reorganize the Municipal Archive. The archive was located then in two small rooms of the  city hall . Through the nineteenth century, historians such as Denys Zubrytskyi (Dionizy Zubrycki), Ivan Vahylevych (Jan Wagilewicz), Wilhelm Rasp and others worked with its collections. Despite the fact that, during the Habsburg period, the city authorities took care of the archives, by the end of the nineteenth century this was already perceived as insufficient. The very approach to the study of history changed, as it began to be considered a subject of scientific studies: therefore, sources, their critical analysis, verification of facts acquired a key role, while traditional (especially oral) stories glorifying heroes and events of the past were rejected. Accordingly, properly arranged archives and convenient access to them by researchers became a matter of utmost necessity.

It was in this way that Ksawery Liske worked, a Polish historian, who, after studying in Berlin (in particular with Professor Leopold von Ranke), moved to Lviv in 1868 and soon founded a school of Polish history at the  Francis University . In addition to purely teaching work, he became a co-founder of the Polish Historical Society. It was from this milieu that Aleksander Semkowicz, the author of the report on the need to reorganize the Lviv archive, who worked as the director of the University library at that time, came out, as well as Aleksander Czołowski, who in 1891 headed the Municipal Archive.

On the one hand, the archive with its huge collections of old prints and manuscripts needed cataloging and publications, to make it easier for researchers to understand what was kept there and thus could be worked with. On the other hand, it also needed new, more spacious and modernly equipped, fireproof and ventilated premises. Although Semkowicz did not suggest ways to solve the issue raised by him, his report instigated a long discussion. According to Czołowski, the Gunpowder Tower could be an excellent solution to the archive premises problem.

The Municipal Archive was not the only one in Lviv. Among notable institutions, the collection of manuscripts was preserved by the Ossoliński National Institute, whose custodians were the above-mentioned Ksawery Liske, and later Wojciech Kętrzyński, both conservators of monuments. From the late eighteenth century, the Akta Grodzkie i Ziemskie operated in Lviv, located in the building of the Bernardine Order, which had been abolished by the Austrian authorities. In the late nineteenth century, it was headed by the famous Polish historian Oswald Balzer.

There were discussions among historians and preservationists about the need to establish the Governor's Office Archive, where historians could have access to government documents that were no longer classified due to their age. An important institution in the archival "landscape" of Lviv was the University Library functioning steadily at the educational institution. It was where the above-mentioned Aleksander Semkowicz worked as well as, in particular, Yevhen Barvinskyi (Eugeniusz Barwiński), the future director of the State Archive (founded as the Governor's Office Archive).

The preservationists managed to convince the then President of Lviv Edmund Mochnacki and his deputy Zdzisław Marchwicki that the reorganization of the archive was an urgent task for Lviv and that the "half-derelict" Gunpowder Tower was valuable in terms of history. Thanks to them, the city purchased the building in 1895 for 6,000 rhenish guldens, which was not a high price. The army sold the premises in view of their supposed complete state of disrepair (wegen gänzlicher Baufälligkeit) (Rutowski, 1905). A commission, which included architects, inspected the building and stated that its walls were intact. The army had plastered the building on the outside for some reason, and it was the cracked plaster that made the impression of decay.

In February 1896, Aleksander Czołowski reported on the Gundpowder Tower case at a meeting of the Lviv branch of the History and Archeology Commission, a department of the Krakow Academy of Learning (Akademia umiejętności). He presented his own research into the history of the building as well as a sketch project for its adaptation. The drawings were prepared by Michał Łużecki, a young architect, who had studied in Lviv, was an assistant at Julian Zachariewicz's architecture department and recently worked in the Building Department of the Lviv Magistrate. The city preliminarily agreed to allocate funds for the project implementation from a million gulden loan received by Lviv from the Austro-Hungarian government.

In 1896, however,  Godzimir Małachowski  was elected as the new president of the city, and Aleksander Czołowski apparently could not reach an agreement with him on the further implementation of the project. So the building just continued to stand there, owned by the city, but with no funds for its adaptation. However, the director of the Magistrate's Building Department, Juliusz Hochberger, took the side of the historian and placed the case under his personal supervision. The current Building Code from 1885 did not contain provisions on heritage protection. Nevertheless, the director could ensure that in the case of appeals to the magistrate for permission to demolish the Tower, the department would not grant it.

There were enough people willing to demolish the Gunpowder Tower. Its convenient location in the center of the city, amidst the greenery and picturesque landscaping of the  Governor's Ramparts , attracted Lviv residents as a place where something new could be built. One of them was Andrzej Gołąb, an architect and at the same time a member of the City Council. He built up entire streets of the city with the same type of residential buildings, often sharply criticized by other architects and preservationists: for them, such buildings represented the decline of architecture, bad taste and poor quality. Evidently, in this case, Gołąb wanted to continue the development of the beginning of ulica Kurkowa (today, Lysenka street), which he started in 1891. Also in the 1890s, the Galician Musical Society and the Firemen Society submitted their petitions to the City Council, willing to build their representative buildings there. The Shevchenko Scientific Society had plans for the territory next to the Tower, willing to erect a monument to Taras Shevchenko there, which the magistrate also forbade (Грушевський, 1900, 200-202).

While heritage protection professionals were in accord about the Gunpowder Tower possessing historical value, there were no talks about any artistic value. The fact that there were people willing to demolish it as well as the lack of interest in it by President Małachowski, are evidence that the building was not popular in general. In 1905, Franciszek Jaworski, a well-known popularizer of Lviv's history and assistant to Aleksander Czołowski in the Municipal Archive, described it as follows:

Always closed, surrounded by a fence, the inaccessible gunpowder tower attracted neither the interest of a wide circle, nor of its owners themselves (Jaworski, 1905, 32).

Michał Łużecki’s project was not an elaborate one. Franciszek Jaworski explained later that in 1895-1896, it was meant to be convincing that the Gunpowder Tower could be adapted at all and possibly meet the needs of an archive. The project included a change in planning, construction of an annex, and of giving the building a new visual image. However, only façades were published thus allowing us to analyze only the latter.

Łużecki proposed to decorate the building adding various elements of Neo-Romanesque and Neo-Gothic styles. The façades, partially lined with brick, were to be topped with decorative mullions and with corner bay windows. At the entrance, a rounded tower with a spire was supposed to appear. Larger windows were to be cut in the thick walls and glazed with stained glass. All these additions had no utilitarian function, just a visual one. Such an image was to provide a visual explanation for Lviv residents of what the Powder Tower once was: an element of ancient fortifications due to which the city was defended from enemies, structures that none of the living people could remember in the late nineteenth century. According to Jaworski,

Where the past speaks through a direct impression, where the building itself and its purpose catch the eye and the mind, it is easy to awaken silenced echoes, to create what is called local patriotism, affection for one's own nest, a link between the past and the present years" (Jaworski, 1905, 30).

Łużecki's project thus reflects the typical approaches of the Historicist period in architecture. The use of historical forms was intended to evoke impressions and associations in the public, but it was not necessary to be accurate or reflect historical truth. Łużecki followed the approach that had become common in Lviv thanks to Julian Zachariewicz, who in 1888-1889 reconstructed the oldest Lviv  church of St. John the Baptist  in a virtually identical manner, altering its image significantly.

Kazimierz Mokłowski was an independent architect who was expelled from the Polytechnic in Lviv in 1892 because of his socialist views and active political engagement. Around 1900, he took up architectural research and soon concentrated on the wooden vernacular buildings of Galicia. At the same time, he began cooperation with the preservationists in Lviv, documented the architectural heritage of the region and designed several projects for the reconstruction of ancient monuments in the spirit of stylistic restoration.

Since the Gunpowder Tower was standing idle, at some point Aleksander Czołowski began to use it to assemble architectural details, which he managed to salvage when old townhouses were demolished in the city center. So window and door frames, rosettes, columns, carved beams, etc. were stored there. It is known, in particular, that during the demolition of townhouses on the site of the  Dnister insurance company's building , eight wagons of such parts were brought there (LNNBU, Manuscripts f. 26, file 6, p. 118). The project suggested using them to turn the Tower into a kind of exhibit, embedding as many as possible of these details in its walls. Above the portal it was proposed to install a bronze figure of St. Michael from the Royal Arsenal, which, restored in the 1860s, was placed on the  Hetman's Ramparts .

At the level of the building layout, Mokłowski suggested using the tower's inner space for storage, arranging four levels of shelves there. Instead, the premises for archive workers and the staircase were to be located in the annexes. Moreover, the ancient building and the modern additions had to be distinguished visually: a strict, medieval tower and a more lavishly decorated Renaissance annex. Thus, it is no longer stylistic restoration in its pure form, as practiced in Lviv by Julian Zachariewicz and his school. On the other hand, this approach cannot be called a completely modern approach to architectural restoration, which was established later.

In addition to the use of authentic details salvaged by Aleksander Czołowski, Mokłowski designed a Gothic attic for the Tower with the use of bricks; as Franciszek Jaworski explained, this was done in order to evoke an association with the ancient Lviv city hall (Jaworski, 1905, 36-37). In a later publication dedicated to the city hall, it is clarified that the attic was mentioned in textual documents of the 1490s, but no material remains or images of it have survived (Jaworski, 1907, 18). Since this building was demolished by order of the Habsburg authorities in the 1820s and replaced by a new one in the Neoclassicist style, one could only guess about the shapes of the authentic attic. The expediency of transferring the architectural forms of city halls to the fortification building does not seem to have caused any reservations among the then preservationists or architects. In general, the ancient building, despite the enlargement of its windows, the addition of a decorative crenellation and an attic, had to remain at large with strict forms referring to the medieval architecture.

Instead, the annex was designed by the architect in the Renaissance forms; moreover, it had to be the "Polish" version of the latter. In Lviv, back in 1901, Kazimierz Mokłowski gave a popular science lecture entitled "On the Polish Renaissance" in which he argued that precisely such forms were uniquely Polish, developed, furthermore, on the basis of Italian influences earlier than the German Renaissance; thus he claimed it was possible to talk about the "superiority of the Poles over the Germans" in the field of art. The lecture caused a lively discussion at that time (Przegląd, 1901, Nr 278–279).

Kazimierz Mokłowski’s project, however, did not put an end to the Gunpowder Tower adaptation case. For example, another sketch was proposed by Teodor Talowski, an architect from Krakow, who was appreciated for his own original style and was one of the conservators in Eastern Galicia at that time too. There was also an idea that an architectural competition should be announced to choose the best option (Jaworski, 1905).

Although these projects by Michał Łużecki, Kazimierz Mokłowski and Teodor Talowski used different forms, their goals were very similar: to evoke associations with the vanished past and to explain this unattractive legacy to the city's contemporary inhabitants. At the same time, the aesthetic views of the architects were dictated entirely by ideological considerations. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the fortifications or the old city hall, built during the time of the Polish Kingdom or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, began to be perceived by the preservationists as a heritage that had been taken away from the people of Lviv (demolished) or defaced by the Austrian authorities. This is how the use of the Gunpowder Tower as a warehouse was interpreted as well as its plastering hiding the stone masonry of the walls. So, on the one hand, the project of the Tower adaptation was designed to correct the "damage" caused to it by the empire that had taken part in the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Lviv turned into a modern city all too rapidly, the Austrian bureaucracy was too radical at giving it a banal, cosmopolitan character, so that even the smallest remnant of the age-old Polish culture would no longer have for us the value of a historical document, the value of a relic... (Jaworski, 1905, 31)

In addition to this anti-imperial (anti-German) move, decorating the building in the Neo-Romanesque or Neo-Gothic style was also an unambiguous stance towards the Ukrainians of Galicia. From the mid-nineteenth century, these styles acquired a distinct interpretation as civilizationally "Western", while the Byzantine style was considered to be civilizationally "Eastern." Rudolf Eitelberger, the first Austrian ideologue of preservationists, emphasized the drawing of a "border" between the two civilizations as early as 1856 (Eitelberger, 1856). Marian Sokołowski, the founder of the Krakow School of Art History and a preservationist in Western Galicia, also attached great importance to drawing such a border. Both his and his school's attitude towards "Eastern" art can well be called orientalization, as this phenomenon was later formulated by Edward Said (Kunińska, 2019). In the case of Polish-Ukrainian relations in Habsburg Galicia, there were many debates about whether a certain building belonged to one or the other civilization, the most significant example being the issue of medieval Halych and whether the cathedral there is Romanesque or Byzantine in style. Consequently, Neo-Romanesque shapes were ideologically engaged, and their use for a fortification building, which was purely utilitarian, with no "stylistic" or national characteristics, would mean assigning the building only to Polish history, thus erasing the multi-ethnicity of Lviv and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This approach is evident in all the above-mentioned projects.

In 1905, on the eve of the regular election to the City Council, Aleksander Czołowski and his colleagues tried to conduct a promotional campaign for the Gunpowder Tower. Franciszek Jaworski, obviously relying on Czołowski's work, described the history of the Tower and the proposed reconstruction in an accessible, popular form: the text was published in the literary supplement of the newspaper Kurjer Lwowski in which he worked. In his publication, Czołowski talked about what was necessary for a modern archive building, thoroughly criticized what the City Council and President Godzimir Małachowski suggested, that is, placing the archive in the Industrial Museum. Kazimierz Mokłowski contributed to the criticism of the Industrial Museum, sharply criticizing its architecture. Tadeusz Rutowski led the writing of a memorial for the City Council outlining the history of the archive reorganization and the adaptation of the Gunpowder Tower to this function.

The adaptation project, developed due to the ideas and with the participation of Aleksander Czołowski, was never implemented. After another failure in the City Council, the discussion shifted to the purchase and adaptation of the nearby and more spacious building of the  Royal Arsenal , where the State Archive of the Lviv Oblast still operates today (2022), its funds largely formed of the documents stored in the old Municipal Archive. The architectural shapes suggested by the adaptation projects of the Gunpowder Tower in 1895–1905 clearly testified to the authors' desire to "ensure the Polish character of Lviv": this is exactly the wording used by historian Heidi Hein-Kircher in the title of her book about Lviv during the period of Galician autonomy (Hein-Kircher, 2020). The cases of the archive and the Tower adaptation were handled exclusively by representatives of the Polish Historical School in Lviv and their close colleagues, while the few Ukrainians among monument conservators abstained from interfering.

However, thanks to the ideas regarding the adaptation of the Tower, the building was saved from demolition: it continued to stand practically unchanged during the two world wars and the interwar period. Probably, these adaptation projects and related discussions that took place in the 1890s and 1900s had some influence on the reconstruction of the building for the Architect's House, which was carried out in the 1950s by the Lviv branch of the Union of Architects of the Ukrainian SSR.

• Oswald Balzer (1858–1933) — legal historian, professor at the Franciscan University, archive director and founding member of a number of scientific societies in Lviv;
• Eugeniusz Barwiński / Yevhen Barvinskyi, (1874-1947) — Ukrainian and later Polish historian and archivist, he worked at the University Library then at the State Archive, was a conservator of monuments in Eastern Galicia;
• Aleksander Czołowski (1865–1944) — historian, director of the Municipal Archive, a conservator of monuments in the districts to the north and west of Lviv, deputy conservator for Lviv;
• Andrzej Gołąb (1837–1903) — architect, member of Lviv's City Council, a major developer in Lviv;
• Juliusz Hochberger (1840–1905) — architect, director of the Municipal Building Department;
• Franciszek Jaworski (1873–1914) — assistant in the Municipal Archive, editor of the Kurjer Lwowski newspaper and author of popular feuilletons about Lviv's past;
• Wojciech Kętrzyński (1838–1918) — historian, custodian of manuscripts at the National Ossolinski Institute, conservator of Polish archival monuments in Eastern Galicia;
• Ksawery Liske (1838–1891) — historian, professor at the Franciscan University, founder of the Lviv School of Polish History, conservator of Polish archival monuments in Eastern Galicia;
• Władysław Łoziński (1843–1913) — man of letters, publicist, politician, monument conservator in Lviv;
• Michał Łużecki (1868–after 1939) — architect at the Municipal Building Department;
• Godzimir Małachowski (1852–1908) — Lviv's President in 1896-1905;
• Zdzisław Marchwicki (1841–1912) — Lviv's Vice-President in 1886-1894;
• Kazimierz Mokłowski (1869–1905) — architect, architectural historian and critic, a socialist politician;
• Edmund Mochnacki (1836–1902) — Lviv's President in 1887-1896;
• Tadeusz Rutowski (1852–1918) — journalist, researcher, a national-democratic politican, collectioner and art amateur, a vice-president of Lviv in 1905-1914;
• Aleksander Semkowicz (1850–1923) — historian, director of the Franciscan Universtiy archive;
• Teodor Talowski (1857–1910) — architect from Cracow, professor of architecture at the Higher Technical School in Lviv (1902-1910), monument conservator in Eastern Galicia.

1. Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library in Lviv. Manuscripts, fond 26, file. 5, p. 8; file 6, pp. 104–118;
2. "Zbiór akt i korespondencji Koła Konserwatorów Galicji Wschodniej we Lwowie", Biblioteka Narodowa, Rps 5545 IV, s. 54;
3. Aleksander Czołowski, W sprawie umieszczenia Archiwum i Muzeum Historycznego miasta Lwowa, (Lwów: Szyjkowski, 1905), 20;
4. Rudolf Eitelberger, "Zur Orientirung auf dem Gebiete der Baukunst und ihrer Terminologie. I. Byzantinisch und Romanisch", Mittheilungen der k.k. Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale, 1856, Nr. 4, 49–53;
5. Franciszek Jaworski, Baszta prochowa i archiwum miejskie, (Lwów, W.A. Szyjkowski, 1905);
6. Franciszek Jaworski, "Ratusz Lwowski", Biblioteka Lwowska, (Lwów: Towarzystwo Miłośników Przeszłości Lwowa, 1907), 94;
7. Aleksander Semkowicz, “O potrzebie i sposobie wydania ważniejszych źródeł znajdujących się w Archiwum miejskiem we Lwowie”, Pamiętnik drugiego zjazdu historyków Polskich we Lwowie, 1. Referaty, (Lwów: Wł. Łoziński, 1890);
8. Pamiętnik Drugiego Zjazdu Historyków Polskich we Lwowie. 2, Obrady i uchwały, (Lwów: Wł. Łoziński, 1891), s. 95–106;
9. Memoryał w sprawie umieszczenia Archiwum i muzeum Historycznego miasta Lwowa,(Lwów: W.A. Szyjkowski, 1905);
10. "Kronika. Akademia Umiejętności w Krakowie", Gazeta Lwowska , 1896, Nr. 69, s. 4;
11. "Rada miasta Lwowa (Posiedzenie z dnia 4 listopada)", Gazeta Lwowska, 1897, Nr. 253, s. 4;
12. "Rada miasta Lwowa (posiedzenie z dnia 19 stycznia)", Gazeta Lwowska, 1899, Nr. 16, s. 5;
13. "Archiwum m. Lwowa", Kurjer Lwowski, 1889, Nr. 300, s. 3;
14. "Archiwum miejskie", Kurjer Lwowski, 1892, Nr. 21, s. 2;
15. "Muzeum miejskie", Kurjer Lwowski, 1892, Nr. 359, s. 3;
16. "Rozwój Lwowa. IV", Kurjer Lwowski, 1896, Nr. 54, s. 1;
17. "Reorganizacja achiwów krajowych we Lwowie i Krakowie", 1897, Dodatek do nr. 12 Kurjera Lwowskiego, s. 2;
18. "Baszta saletrzana i... Archiwum miejskie", Kurjer Lwowski, 1902, Nr. 309, s. 2;
19. Kazimierz Mokłowski, "Nieco o nowym muzeum miejskiem", Kurjer Lwowski, 1904, Nr. 72, s. 1–2
20.  "Przeniesienie Archiwum miejskiego", Kurjer Lwowski, 1904, Nr. 210, s. 2;
21. "Sprawa archiwum", Kurjer Lwowski, 1905, Nr. 80, s. 1;
22. Przegląd naukowy, literacki i polityczny, 1901, Nr. 278, 279;
23. Михайло Грушевський, “Улиця Шевченка у Львові”, Літературно-науковий вістник, 1900, Т. 10, кн. 6, 200-202;
24. J. Mourdaunt Crook, The Dilemma of Style. Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post-Modern, (London: John Murray, 1989);
25. Heidi Hein-Kircher, Lemberg's "polnishen Charakter" Sichern, (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2020);
26. Magdalena Kunińska, “On the Borderline. Marian Sokołowski’s Attitude Toward Byzantine and Ruthenian Art”, From Ausgleich to the Holocaust Ukrainian and Jewish Artists of Lemberg/Lwów/Lviv, ed. Sergey R. Kravtsov, Ilia M. Rodov, Małgorzata Stolarska-Fronia (Grünberg, 2019), pp. 13–32;
27. Olha Zarechnyuk, History is More than Beauty: Reassessing Lviv’s Architectural Heritage in the Late Habsburg Period, manuscript of a presentation at the International workshop "Restoration and Promotion of Architectural Monuments in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and First Half of the 20th Centuries", at the ETH Zürich on July 7–8, 2022;
28. Микола Бевз, "Порохова башта у східному пряслі фортифікацій середмістя Львова", Current Issues in Research, Conservation and Restoration of Historic Fortifications, т. 12, ред. Зиґмунт Ґадзінський, Микола Бевз, (Львів: Видавництво Львівської політехніки, 2020), с. 35–46.