Obstacles on the Path to Urban Greatness: Competing Plans for the Creation of Greater Lviv (“Wielki Lwów”)

Drexler’s European Experience

Lviv’s Technical Institute, also referred to as the Polytechnic Institute, already enjoyed an excellent reputation when Ignacy Drexler, at the time nineteen years old, enrolled to study engineering in 1897. Some of the best technicians, architects, and engineers of the region had attended the institute, which was founded in 1844 as a “Technical Academy.” ⁸ In the first decades of its existence, there were only few local experts who could teach there, hence lectures were held in German, Russian, French, and English. ⁹ After beginning their studies at the Lviv Polytechnic, students would generally continue their studies in Vienna. Many of them returned after a few years of studying and working abroad with new ideas.

Julian Zachariewicz, whose architechtural designs would significantly shape the urban landscape of Lviv and who served as a model for many architects and engineers in later years—including Drexler—also spent many years in Vienna. The biography of Julian Zachariewicz, also a native of Lviv, is typical for a whole cohort of Galician artists and architects of the Habsburg period. A brief account of the life of this eminent architect serves to illustrate the typical careers of graduates of the Lviv Polytechnic in the nineteenth century. A comparison between the biographies of Zachariewicz and Drexler, who belongs to the next generation, moreover shows the ways in which the political changes of the time had an impact on the careers of technical experts.

Since the curricula for the technical subjects were identical at the institutes in Vienna and Galicia in the nineteenth century, a change in place of study was unproblematic. Until the year 1870, the official language at the institute in Lviv was German, so there was also no language barrier when students went to study in the Empire’s capital. ¹⁰ Artistic and technical training in the Habsburg Empire conveyed a broad scope of knowledge in different areas. Hence, graduates of the technical institutes were able to work in various areas. It is thus no surprise that Zachariewicz, who graduated from the Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute in Vienna in 1858, first worked for Leopold Ernst, the master builder of Vienna’s St. Stephan Church, before he went on to work for various railway companies in the Empire. ¹¹

In 1871, Zachariewicz was appointed to the Chair for Architecture at Lviv’s Technical Academy. One year later, the new main and adjoining buildings of the Technical Academy, which had been built on the basis of Zachariewicz’s plans, were inaugurated. In 1877, the year in which the Academy was renamed “Technische Hochschule Lemberg” [Lviv Technical Institute], Zachariewicz became its director. ¹² Zachariewicz and the majority of professors in Lviv opposed this German name, instead preferring the Polish “Szkola Politechniczna.” This comes as no surprise, as Polish had become the official language of instruction at the institute in 1870. In the course of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Poles in Galicia increasingly also received national rights. Polonization ensued in the areas of education and administration as well as in other societal areas. Ultimately, Galicia received full autonomy under Polish sovereignty in 1873. ¹³

Attaining this autonomy led to a loosening of the bonds between Galicia and the Austrian heartland. If one wanted to pursue an ambitious career in the technical professions, it was no longer a precondition to have studied in Vienna. For example, Alfred Zachariewicz, Julian Zachariewicz’s son and an equally acclaimed architect, studied at the Lviv Polytechnic and then went on to attain more practical experience in various local architecture firms before he spent merely one year in Vienna in 1895. ¹⁴

Ignacy Drexler, who was born in 1878 and hence belonged to the same generation as Alfred Zachariewicz, traveled around a bit more. As a newly graduated engineer, he initially worked at the State Bureau for Road Construction and Track Routes. In this function, he took part in a competition tendered by the Cracow magistrate in 1908 to develop a regulation plan for Greater Cracow [Wielki Kraków]. The competition, which was explicitly addressed to “Polish technicians and artists,” set a task which illustrates what was at stake: “We need a plan in which the towns and villages bordering on the city are incorporated into it. In this context, the latest developments in public transport, social hygiene, aesthetics and urban society must be taken into account.” ¹⁵ Besides Drexler, who submitted a proposal, eight further architects or author collectives took part in the competition for Greater Cracow. ¹⁶ The project of the architect Jozéf Czajkowski and his associates eventually won, but other contributions were also praised for their solutions to specific problems, and their authors received prize money. Ignacy Drexler received 1,000 crowns. ¹⁷ He also received the opportunity to work in the Department for Urban Regulation of the Cracow Magistrate, putting the plans for Greater Cracow into practice. ¹⁸

However, Drexler only worked in Cracow for a short time; in 1910, he returned to Lviv. In the course of the reconstruction of the administration in the Lviv Magistrate, a division was created for technical tasks and urban planning. Drexler, at the time thirty-two years old, became the head of the Office for Surveying and Regulation in this division. ¹⁹ Among his tasks was the compilation of a regulation plan for Lviv. He spoke about the difficulties involved in dividing the urban and suburban space into plots—one of the most important tasks in the compilation of a regulation plan—at a seminar on urban planning he held in Berlin in 1913. ²⁰ The design of this plan was to lay the groundwork for Drexler’s academic career. In 1913, he was offered the newly founded Chair for Urban Planning at the Lviv Polytechnic, where he had already worked as a lecturer since he attained his degree.

Urban Planning as a Reaction to Urban Growth: The Example of Lviv

In the course of time, the differentiation of urban construction and planning at the administrative and academic level was a reaction to the rapid growth of cities in the nineteenth century. With progressing urbanization, greater technical, architectural, and urban planning expertise was necessary to cope with the problems it entailed. Lviv’s development had also progressed so far in the nineteenth century that the founding of both the Office for Surveying and Regulation at the Lviv Magistrate and the Chair for Urban Planning at the Polytechnic Institute had become necessary. Drexler, who took on a leading position in administration and academia, can duly be called a pioneer of urban planning in Central Europe.

As Loziński notes in the introductory quote, Vienna served as a model for the provincial capitals in architecture as in many other areas. The graduates of various technical institutes, the majority of which spent at least part of their training in the capital, took the monumental buildings of Vienna built in the nineteenth century as examples. The Empire had centrally created a whole repertoire of so-called typical buildings for certain public edifices. In accordance with these examples, local architects constructed railway stations, schools, and post offices across the Empire. ²¹ Vienna also served as an example in urban planning. Teofil Merunowicz, a Polish politician, first voiced the idea to build a circular road modeled on Vienna’s Ringstrasse ²² in Lviv in his Rozwój Miasta Lwowa [The Development of Lviv], which appeared in 1877. ²³

A Late Competition

In Vienna, whose population and urban growth had already set in at an earlier stage, the suburbs had already been incorporated into the city in 1890. The General Regulating Plan, which was adopted in1892, was gradually implemented in the following years.

Although in the capital of Galicia the population increase and the expansion of urban territory set in later than in Vienna, the delays in the implementation of necessary technical and administrative measures took an unreasonable amount of time. With Drexler, an expert had been appointed to the right position, but still concrete plans for the creation of Greater Lviv were only discussed in the 1920s.

The fact that the competition was tendered quite late was one reason why in later years the creation of Greater Lviv was repeatedly postponed. Julia Bogdanova, a lecturer at the Chair for Design and Foundations of Architecture at the “L’vivs’ka Politechnika,” has done extensive research on the city’s urban development at the threshold of the twentieth century. She attributes the delays in measures that would have been necessary in the areas of administration and urban development to a lacking awareness of the problems on the part of the political decision makers. In the 1913 elections to the City Council, the advocates of reforming administration and urban planning in Lviv could not prevail. ²⁴

At first, it was the lack of awareness on the part of administrators that delayed the tendering of a competition for a development plan for Greater Lviv. Then, the outbreak of World War I and the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918-1919 rendered all previous efforts obsolete.

When the deadline of the competition for a development plan for Greater Lviv, which had finally been tendered in 1921, ended on March 5, not a single proposal had been submitted. ²⁵

It was mostly thanks to Drexler that in the ten years after 1914, urban development in Lviv did not entirely come to a halt. Between 1915 and 1917, the Office for Surveying and Regulation compiled two detailed maps of Lviv and its surrounding areas that were necessary for the zoning and regulation plan. The publication of his Redevelopment of the villages and towns in our country [Odbudowanie wsi i miast na ziemi naszej] in 1916, which for a long term served as the standard work on the issue, also shows Drexler’s tremendous productivity. ²⁶ He had a determining influence on the compilation of these two maps. The revised edition of the construction statute of 1919 defined norms and regulations for building activities in the city. Only a year later, Drexler published his Wielki Lwów.

A closer glance at this central work by Drexler shows that on the one hand it can be read as a plea for the compilation of a zoning and regulation plan, and on the other as an early draft of his proposal for the creation of Greater Lviv. Last but not least, it is a resume of all of Drexler’s previous efforts. All the knowledge that Drexler had attained in his studies, during his practical experience in Cracow and in his exchange with the other competition entries for Wielki Kraków flowed into his Wielki Lwów. At the same time, all the expansion plans designed for various major cities at the time served as important points of orientation and as important sources of information.

Planning a European Metropolis: The Competition Entries of Ignacy Drexler and Tadeusz Tołwiński

Augmented with further maps and plans, Wielki Lwów was Drexler’s entry for the Competition for the Development and Restructuring of Lviv [Konkurs na plan rozbudowy i przebudowy miasta]. ²⁷ A few days before, in January 1924, the thirty-seven-year-old architect Tadeusz Tołwiński had already submitted his entry Outline for the Expansion of Lviv [O szkicowym projekcie rozbudowy miasta Lwowa]. Drexler’s and Tołwiński’s entries were to remain the only proposals for the creation of Greater Lviv. Shortly after they were submitted, the two proposals were assessed in the town hall by an expert jury. Later, they were made accessible to the broader public—in the town hall and in the ceremonial hall of the Lviv Polytechnic. ²⁸

During his architectural training, Tadeusz Tołwiński had already gathered extensive international experience. With the submission of his proposal for the restructuring of Lviv, Tołwiński, who was born in Odessa in 1885 and grew up in Warsaw, for the first time focused his attention on a city located in the former Polish partition territory under Habsburg rule. His participation in the competition shows how quickly ties and networks formed among colleagues from different partition territories after the resurrection of the Polish Republic. Tołwiński’s biography moreover shows the degree to which the first generation of urban planners and developers in the young Polish states could profit from their international experience.

Tołwiński had studied architecture in the German city of Karlsruhe, specializing in urban planning. Early on, he traveled to various European countries including Italy, France, and England, and even spent some time in the United States. He attained his degree in engineering in Saint Petersburg. Tołwiński’s participation at international urban planning conferences in Vienna (1926) and London (1935) is further evidence that Polish urbanism was embedded in an international scientific scene. When he submitted his proposal for the expansion of Lviv in 1924, he was working at the Chair for Urban Development of the Warsaw Polytechnical Institute. ²⁹

In their elaborations, Tołwiński and Drexler had to take into account two basic things. First, they had to fulfill the specific tasks set in the competition regarding suggestions for the expansion of the city’s territory. They had to develop a traffic concept and the partition of the city on the basis of specific criteria regarding the use of certain areas. Second, the radically concentric layout of the city limited their freedom of action.

Both Tołwiński and Drexler wanted to resolve the necessary expansion of the city’s territory by incorporating the neighboring towns and villages into the city. They developed different suggestions for the expansion of the public transport system. According to Bogdanova, who has studied both proposals, Tołwiński’s plans to restructure Lviv as a railway hub were quite extravagant and costly. ³⁰ Besides the new construction of a railway line from Lviv via Lublin to Warsaw, Tołwiński’s proposal envisioned a railway ring around Lviv as well as far-reaching changes to the existing railway system of person as well as freight transport.

The new construction and expansion of Lviv’s railway system would also have entailed far-reaching changes for the city center. One of the three great transport axes Tołwiński planned would have had its starting point at the site of the newly planned railway station. Another main road was planned to run from Ulica Podwale (today vul. Pidval’na) to Wysoki Zamek (today Vysokyi Zamok). This road would have entailed the construction of a 290-meter tunnel. In combination with the other two, the construction of the third axis would have meant a drastic restructuring of the third district—a desired effect as this district had long been considered problematic.

In the past, the city had mostly grown along radials in different directions from the city center. Concentric development, with roads connecting the radial axes in circles around the center, had been neglected. ³¹ Both Drexler’s and Tołwiński’s proposals contained suggestions to strengthen concentric urban growth. The Ringstrasse in Tołwiński’s plan would have dominated the city, since even at its narrowest segment, it would still have been twenty-eight meters broad. One section was to be reserved for tram traffic. ³²

Drexler’s plans for the expansion of Lviv’s ring structure were even more drastic than Tołwiński’s. He envisioned the construction of two further rings around the city center. One was to be located at the level of the former town barriers, the other further outward to connect the outer towns and villages. His plan for an inner-city green belt envisaged the expansion of existing parks and green areas. Drexler also made several suggestions for the creation of additional green spaces in Lviv. He wanted to create an entire ensemble of new parks. His plans show that Drexler was an adherent of Ebenezer Howard’s concept of the garden city. Already in 1913, Drexler had published a text dealing with the British garden city movement. ³³

Drexler’s aspiration—if not to turn Lviv into a garden city at least to drastically increase the number of parks and green spaces—appears as remarkable from today’s perspective as his idea to build an inland port. However, he suggested that the inland port as well as the two tunnels he had planned to alleviate inner-city traffic problems should be built at some point in the distant future.

In the development of their projects, both Drexler and Tołwiński took up ideas and concepts that had been developed by other experts in the past. Plans to restructure the third district, for example, had already been discussed in 1898 and 1907. In the area of railway traffic, there had been suggestions for improvement since the first train arrived in Lviv in 1861. Already then, the expansion of Lviv as a railway hub, the construction of a new railway station closer to the city center, and the development of a railway ring around the city had been contested issues. And concepts had been developed for the creation of urban recreation areas, for example, at the High Castle or the Citadel. Tołwiński, whose plan included the demolition of old buildings for the realization of his plan, repeated an idea already developed by Drexler a few years earlier. ³⁴

All in all, Drexler and Tołwiński suggest similar solutions for the restructuring of Lviv. By dividing the city into different zones (in which they planned residential and business areas), presenting a traffic concept, and submitting plans for the creation of sanitary and social institutions, they fulfilled the tasks set in the competition for the creation of Greater Lviv. Had all of their suggestions been realized, Lviv would have become a model city, that is, a city that was considered a “perfect” city according to the standards of the time—with sufficient green spaces, an amphitheater, a new railway station, a public pool, and many other feats. Had the political decision makers realized Tołwiński’s plan for a monument to the defenders of the city [Monument Chwały Obroców Lwowa], it would also have become more of a Polish city. ³⁵

Obstacles on the Path to Creating Greater Lviv

According to Bogdanova, Drexler, who had for some years worked at the City Magistrate, was more familiar with his home city’s financial situation. Hence, his suggestions were not quite as extravagant as Tołwiński’s. However, the city’s financial situation was so disastrous that initially none of the ideas developed by the two urban planners could be realized. The expansion of the city’s territory was once again postponed. Until 1927, not a single new school was built, although this was one of the most pressing problems outlined in the competition of 1919. After all, the last inauguration of a new school dated back to the year 1914. ³⁶

Although no concrete steps were taken to realize these construction proposals in the years following the competition, urban development did not come to a standstill in administration and planning. Tołwiński continued his academic career and published several scientific contributions. His three-volume work Urbanistyka, published between 1937 and 1963, is regarded as a standard work, bringing him the title “pioneer of urbanism in the twentieth century.” ³⁷

As Professor for Urban Development at Lviv’s Polytechnic Institute, Ignacy Drexler also continued to address the development of Lviv in scientific publications. Moreover, the Lviv City Magistrate asked him to turn the suggestions contained in both plans for the creation of Great Lviv into more realistic projects. In 1925, he again participated in a competition for the development of a general remediation plan—this time for the city of Lublin. Drexler was also actively involved in the development of a national act passed in 1928 which outlined regulations and norms for the planning of residential areas. ³⁸ However, he did not live to see the realization of the one urban development measure he had fought for so many years: in 1930, one year before the surrounding towns and villages were finally incorporated into Lviv, he committed suicide. ³⁹ He was buried at the Lychakiv [Łyczakowski] cemetery in Lviv, whose expansion and reconstruction he had been involved in a few years earlier.

In 1931, some of the surrounding suburbs were finally incorporated into the city. Zniesienie, parts of Krywczyces, Kozielniki, Kulparków, Signiówka, Lewandówka, and Kleparów as well as Hołosko Małe and Zamarstynów became part of Lviv. As a result, the city’s territory expanded from thirty-two to sixty-four square kilometers, and four new districts were added to the five existing ones.

In the first half of the 1930s, building activities increased markedly in Lviv. In 1936, more construction projects were realized than between 1911 and 1913—the years that had until then held the record. Particularly the southern part of the city profited from this boom. Seventy-five percent of the territory newly developed in the early 1930s was located there. Most of the new areas were residential districts. A detailed zoning plan created in 1936 by the City Council was the foundation for these new areas. The zoning plan, in turn, went back to Drexler’s competition entry of 1924. ⁴⁰

The lively building activity of the first half of the 1930s increasingly died down in subsequent years. One major reason for this was that Lviv was not included in Poland’s Central Industrial Ring [Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy], which was created in 1937. This project significantly profited from investments into industry and construction. ⁴¹ In 1938, the Polish historian Łucia Charewiczowa even came to the conclusion that “the regulation plans developed by Drexler and Tołwiński are ending in construction chaos.” ⁴²

In the following decades, Lviv’s population continued to increase and the incorporation of further territory became necessary. The city experienced a substantial expansion of its territory under German occupation in 1942. Through incorporation, the city’s territory grew to 260 square kilometers, and the city was divided into eleven districts. Lviv also underwent territorial changes during Soviet times. Initially, the expansion that had taken place under German occupation was reversed again. ⁴³ In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, during which time the growth of the population persisted, the city again incorporated new territories.

To steer urban growth onto the right tracks, several new plans and concepts were developed. Like Drexler and Tołwiński had relied on existing plans in their conceptions of Greater Lviv, their successors repeatedly incorporated their ideas into plans of their own. After the end of World War II, under the leadership of the head architect Oleksandr Kas’ianov, the Office for Urban Development initially reverted to the much more pompous and costly plans Tołwiński had envisioned. Later plans again also included ideas that Drexler had developed in different writings. ⁴⁴

Today, Lviv occupies 171 square kilometers. Demands are again being voiced to expand the city’s territory and to develop a new regulation plan. ⁴⁵ In future development plans for Lviv, we can hence continue to expect to encounter Drexler’s work—be it in the form of his comprehensive statistical data or his different building projects.

Conclusion

The creation of Greater Lviv was a history of delays. There were several reasons for why the tendering of the competition, the submission of entries, the incorporation of surrounding territories, and the realization of concrete projects were repeatedly postponed. Up to the outbreak of World War I, and during the following Polish-Ukrainian War, there was initially little willingness on the part of political decision makers to implement measures to enlarge Lviv. From 1914 on, the war halted all efforts, and in the 1920s, it was mainly financial problems that prevented the implementation of existing plans.

The urban planner Ignacy Drexler played a decisive role during the foundation period of the young Polish state. With his drafts and projects, he participated in larger debates that persisted into the 1920s surrounding the nature of the city of the future and the requirements it would need to fulfill. He profited from the theoretical and practical knowledge he had been able to gather in different European countries.

Drexler’s and Tołwiński’s work also influenced following generations of urban developers and architects. The knowledge about urban planning and development was hence not only exchanged in the historical context of a certain time period and between certain places, it was also transmitted into the future. That local planners in Galicia continue to refer to Drexler—particularly to the data and statistics he compiled for Wielki Lwów—underscores the relevance of his work.

Ignacy Drexler’s farsightedness regarding the future development of Lviv is primarily revealed in Wielki Lwów, which appeared in 1920, and in his entry of 1924 in the competition for the creation of Greater Lviv. His numbers regarding the city’s population growth were as accurate as his prognoses regarding the development of industry and traffic. Moreover, he was right in his prediction that Lviv would develop into an important cultural and administrative center. ⁴⁶