Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (19.2019)

of the complexes, whereas their construction focused primarily on the use of ma-
terials and building structure that was appropriate for their particular function.98 99
Stefan Tholl points to this message of the architecture of urban slaughterhouses,
while quoting descriptions formulated by the architects who designed them.
Similarly to the buildings of five Paris slaughterhouses constructed after 1818,
the architecture of Prussian slaughterhouses was described as economical, durable,
simple, and orderly, and even as fostering the maintenance of cleanliness. For these
reasons, most often it was deprived of decoration or apparent stylistic features.
Only the administrative buildings, which generally masked the slaughterhouse
and cold storage buildings on the Street side, were designed as morę explicitly
monumental and even indicating the importance of the municipal facility for
the towns economy." For this reason, stylish costumes with characteristic ar-
chitectural detail were often used on their faęades. The commonplace repertoire
of motifs included, among others, tondos with detached animal heads. In Lviv,
these were fitted just below the tops of faux avant-corps of the preserved admin-
istrative buildings from the side of todays Promyslova Street (see: Figurę 8).100
These eloąuent decorations, which first appeared on the faęades of the municipal
slaughterhouses in Paris - as Paula Young Lee notes - carried a message indicat-
ing that as a result of killing animals, public hunger would be satisfied. In this
way, the killing of animals was reduced to the symbol of sacrifice, carried out for
the good of the generał public, whereas the butchers profession was presented
as an important social mission.101
According to the provisions of the contract, the city bought an electric tram
company from Siemens & Halske on August 1,1896. The job of the director
of the Municipal Electric Railways enterprise was entrusted to engineer Józef
Tomicki (1863-1925), who in November 1897 took over the duties from his
erstwhile superior A. Kern.102 Tomicki almost immediately faced the problem
of the facility’s expansion, which became necessary due to the dynamically
increasing number of electric tram journeys.103 The start of planning works
on the expansion of the power plant in 1899 was the immediate result of the de-
cision by the city authorities to electrically illuminate the interior of the mag-
nificent building of the Municipal Theatre, erected in 1898-1900. At that time,
two possible versions were considered. The conservative version consisted
of the construction of a smali power plant within the theatre building that would
produce electricity on site. This solution was used in many cities, including Lviv,
where from June 1894 electric lighting of the main post office was enabled by
a electricity generating unit, consisting of a gas motor coupled with a DC (direct
98 Sprawozdanie komisji wydelegowanej, pp. 21,23,25.
99 S. Tholl, Preufien blutige Mauern, pp. 287-288.
100 Ibidem, pp. 288-290; A. Gryglewska, P. Gerber, Wpływ rozwoju technologii, pp. 267-269; P. Young
Lee, Siting the Slaughterhouse, pp. 50-51; K.A. Wojtczak, Zespół zabudowań, p. 203.
101 P. Young Lee, Siting the Slaughterhouse, pp. 57-58. For the photographs showing administrative
buildings of the municipal slaughterhouse at Gabrielivka and tondoes with detached animal
heads, see: J. Lewicki, Między tradycją a nowoczesnością. Architektura Lwowa w latach 1893-1918,
Warszawa 2005, p. 39 (fig. 8).
102 Kontrakt zawarty z firmą Siemens & Halske, pp. 7-9; A. Kryżaniwskij, Prąd stały, pp. 124-125;
P. Rataj, Józef Tomicki (1863-1925) - pionier elektroenergetyki lwowskiej, „Przegląd Zachodnio-
pomorski”, 31,2016, issue. 3, p. 19.
103 J. Tomicki, Ze statystyki, p. 3.

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