Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (19.2019)

and first floor. The rooms were covered with wooden beam ceilings. The building
itself was covered with a wooden gable roof supported by queen post truss.16
The smallest, one-story building of the workshop housed a forge with two forg-
ing furnaces, and a locksmiths workshop. Relatively high rooms of the workshop
rooms covered with a wooden gable roof supported by an open queen post
truss.17
In 1854, the professional Berlin Journal titled Zeitschrift fur Bauwessen pub-
lished a design for the gas plant complex in Magdeburg by H.V. von Unruh
(investment project of the Megdeburger Gas-Gesellschaft A.-G., implemented
in 1852-1853).18 It shows the separate buildings of the retort house, machinę
room, and desulphurisation facility, whose brick faęades were divided similarly
to the faęades of the retort house and the desulphurization facility of the Lviv gas
plant, that is with lesenes evenly spaced on the pedestal of the stone foundation. In
the fields between the lesenes, pairs of rectangular Windows and the cornice strip
extending above them have been were fitted. Resting upon it were the ventilation
holes, with narrow, rectangular patterns resembling pairs of smali Windows.19 In
a similar way, much smaller ventilation holes, reduced to narrow vertical gaps,
were madę just below the eaves of the roof of the retort house and desulphuri-
sation facility in Lviv (see: Drawing 1). The same scheme of the faęade division,
with the use of Windows of various shapes and ventilation openings located
above them, can be found in the buildings of the Messingwalzwerk Heckmann
& Ravene brass foundry from 1836 and the August Borsig factory of machinery
from the 1840S, both in Berlin.20
In the case of smaller gasworks complexes, one window at a time was fitted
in the fields between the lesenes - as, for example, in the preserved gasworks in
Frankfurt (Oder), erected by the company from Dessau (see: Figurę 1). Another,
similarly shaped faęade of the gas plant building by the Dessau company in Solec
district of Warsaw is shown in the drawing from 1871 (see: Figurę 2). The same
arrangement was used in the production buildings of the gas plant in Lviv, as
shown in a photograph from the early i86os (see: Figurę 3).21 In the buildings
of the aforementioned plants we are dealing with a repetition of the pattern de-
rived from the doctrine of the French professor of architecture Jean-Nicolas-Louis
Durand (1760-1830). The latter popularized the departure from the traditional for-
mula of architectural orders in favour of a style-less, yet simple and monumental


Figurę 1. Gasworks in
Frankfurt of the Oder
of 1856, status as of 2010.
Photo by Miron Urbaniak
-> see p. 167

Figurę 2. Gasworks at Solec
in Warsaw, woodcut of 1871.
Source: “Tygodnik Ilustro-
wany”, 7,1871, nr 176, s. 229
-> see p. 167
Figurę 3. View of the gas-
works in Lviv, status as
of 1861-1863. Photo by
Karol Ferdynand Lang,
the I & I Kotlobulatov Col-
lection
-> see p. 167

16 Ibidem,“Wohnhaus fur die Gas Anstalt zu Lemberg”, edited by H.V. von Unruh, Dessau 16 iii 1857,
f. 119.
17 Ibidem, “Gas Anstalt zu Lemberg. Werkstatt”, edited by H.V. von Unruh, Dessau 16 iii 1857,
f. 118.
18 H.V. von Unruh, Die Gas-Anstalt zu Magdeburg, “Zeitschrift fur Bauwessen”, 4,1854, issue 5-6,
col. 230-231.
19 Ibidem, col. 240-243 -includes a description of these buildings along with technical eąuipment.
I quote from a copy kept at the Museum of Architecture of the Technical University in Berlin,
Inv. no. zbf 04,034, “Gasanstalt Magdeburg”, as edited by H.V. von Unruh (www.architektur-
museum.ub.tu-berlin.de/index.php?p=79&Daten=2o6o89, accessed: 12 May 2019).
20 M. Klinkott, Die Backsteinbaukunst der Berliner Schule von K.F. Schinkel bis zum Ausgang des
Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1988 (= Die Bauwerke und Kunstdenkmaler von Berlin, 15), pp. 184-188;
M. Mislin, Industriearchitektur in Berlin 1840-1910, Berlin-Tiibingen 2002, pp. 214-215.
21 The photograph by K.F. Lang, taken some time between 1861 and 1863 was published by Iryna
Kotlobulatova (flbsis hu fonioepafii 2/Lwów na fotografii 2, Lwów 2011, p. 10) erroneously
identifying the buildings in the photograph as “a view of the brewery”.

From “Berlin schód” to Art Nouveau: contribution to the study of architecture...

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