Just a few hundred metres from the Palace of Culture, at 45 Nowogrodzka Street, stands the majestic edifice of Telephones and Telegraph. In the last century, its strategic importance, slender tower and innovative design dominated the rooftops of the neighbourhood. Soon, thanks to the planned revitalisation, this almost 100-year-old building will once again take its place in the pantheon of the capital’s most important buildings.
Before work begins at 45 Nowogrodzka Street, with the invaluable help of the varsavianist and art historian Jerzy S. Majewski, we will try to bring you up to date on the fate of this place, so strongly linked to the development of Warsaw after the crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Jerzy S. Majewski:
At the time of its opening in 1933, the building of the Telecommunications Office at the junction of Nowogrodzka and Poznańska Streets was regarded as one of the most modern public technical buildings on the continent. Working there meant prestige and financial stability.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, as many as 900 people worked in the super-modern Telecommunications Office building. The work was well paid and stable. It was valued well, remembering the difficult times of the Great Depression, which lasted in Poland until the mid-1930s.
Looking at pre-war photographs, it is easy to feel the atmosphere of the place at the time. The spacious, high-ceilinged lobbies give the impression of illustrating one of the newest office buildings in America at the time. The impressive, single-space open-plan interiors are filled with long tables at which dozens of women sit. Huge windows make the spaces overflow with light, while the desks display not only modern lamps, but also a variety of now mysterious-looking devices. Looking from afar, the dominant feature is the towering part of the building, closing the perspective of Żurawia Street.
The new Telecommunications Office
All these features fill the staff of the newly established Telecommunications Office with pride, which began its activities with the completion of the building’s construction in 1933. It merged the previous offices of intercity telephones, telegraph and radiotelegraph. The telegraph central office started working here in 1934, and a year later the telephone exchange was put into operation. Most of the building’s space was devoted to telecommunications equipment, but there was plenty of office space. On the side of St. Barbara Street, the offices of the technical departments of the Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs and the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs were located, as well as a small museum of post and telecommunications. The telegraph and post office rooms, which were accessible to the public, had entrances from Nowogrodzka Street.
Construction well thought out in every detail
A rather slim plot of land between Nowogrodzka and Św. Barbary Streets, along Poznanska Street, on which there had been a woollen warehouse before the war, was earmarked for the creation of the innovative headquarters. The first architectural competition for the concept of the building was organised as early as 1922, just after the situation on the borders of the resurgent Republic had calmed down, and the country was devastated by war and simply poor. If the building had been erected at that time, its architecture would certainly have been quite conservative and its furnishings far less modern.
The final design for the Telecommunications Office building, by Julian Puterman and Leszek Sawicki, came a few years later from the design office at the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. This office acted as a special cell dedicated to designing forward-looking postal and telecommunications facilities. It created super-modern buildings that did not deviate in architectural quality, nor in functional layouts and technical solutions from the latest European solutions of the time.
The building at 45 Nowogrodzka Street used an innovative riveted steel structure. Its author was Waldemar Radlow. Later such a skeleton was used for, among others, the tallest buildings in Poland, completed in 1934: the skyscrapers in Katowice at Żwirki i Wigury Street and Prudential in Warsaw. The steel structure of the Telegraph building made it possible to design large rooms with a reduced number of supports and to insert huge windows that provided light for the interiors.
The result was a modern building, efficiently constructed, employee-friendly, functional and logical. The building as a whole gave the impression of several volumes forming interlocking cuboids, with the tower as the dominant feature. The façades were clad in red sandstone up to the height of the first floor, while the upper floors were covered with a noble ‘Terrazite’ plaster. The main entrance is located in the corner at the junction of Nowogrodzka and Poznanska Streets. Above it, there is a stone inscription “INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE, TELEGRAPH, RADJOTELEGRAPH” and a highly memorable stylised eagle chiseled by Jan Goliński.
The eagle, the inscription and the post office are still the most recognisable elements of the Telecommunications Office building, a reminder of its golden days. With the revitalisation of the building, these three symbols will remain unchanged. And it will still be possible to make appointments here under the Post Office.
