Wooden four-family houses of the interwar period in Hajnówka and Czarna Białostocka 5
Before World War I, Hajnówka had about 600 inhab-
itants (Pater 2016, 130), and after the events of the war,
fewer than two hundred. Over time, the town gained eco-
nomic importance and became […] the largest center of
the wood industry in north-eastern Poland. Development
is going at such a fast pace that Hajnówka has already
surpassed Bielsk in terms of the number of inhabitants
(Karpiński, Orłowicz 1937, 54). At the end of the 1930s,
Hajnówka was inhabited by several thousand people, with
some sources claiming that in 1939 there were up to 17,000
inhabitants in the town (Pater 2013, 95).
Czarna Białostocka also owes its intensive develop-
ment to the wood industry. In 1915, the Germans built six
sawmills, a woodchip production plant, workshops, a pow-
er plant and narrow-gauge railway lines for transporting
wood in the village near the Czarna Wieś station (Dobroń-
ski 2014, 89). The industrial base left after the German oc-
cupation was expanded after the war and became the main
driving force behind the development of the town. In 1962,
the town was transformed into the city that today is called
Czarna Białostocka.
In the interwar period, as a result of the economic devel-
opment of both towns, there was a large increase in the pop-
ulation and, consequently, a rapid increase in demand for
housing. In order to satisfy the demand, numerous houses
were erected. The construction of new buildings was of-
ten done in a chaotic manner. At that time, Haj nówka was
described as follows: Nevertheless, it has the character of
a semi-rural industrial settlement and is built up quite un-
systematically (Karpiński, Orłowicz 1937, 54). Over time,
housing estates appeared, which were given a uniform
architectural character. Because of their orderly compo-
sition, they tended to stand out in the urban structure of
the town.
The State Forests Company and the quads
An important role in the management of forest re-
sources was played by the State Forests company [Lasy
Państwowe]. It was established in 1924 (Lasy Państwowe,
2024). The nal organization of the company was complet-
ed in 1930. The management of the company was provided
by the General Directorate of the State Forests, established
in 1930 (Broda 2006, 103). It was responsible for the Tech-
nical Oce of the Construction Department, and in the
years 1937–1938 many designs of typical buildings were
developed by this oce. A common feature of these struc-
tures was, of course, the use of wood as the basic build-
ing material. The functions of the buildings correspond-
ed to the needs of the State Forests. Designs for a typical
forestry oce, forest inspector’s lodge, forester’s lodge,
gamekeeper’s lodge, farm buildings and many others were
prepared
1
. Among them were residential buildings. These
included designs of houses for 20 and 40 seasonal workers,
barracks and 2-, 4- and 6-apartment workers’ buildings.
The four-family houses erected in Haj nówka and Czarna
1
Based on a query at the AAN in Warsaw, Ministry of Internal
Aairs, le no. 2/9/0/5.5/I 3953-3967.
Białostocka have the same attributes as a typical design of
a 4-apartment workers’ building, marked with the symbol
r2 (Fig. 2).
The typical design r2, developed in February 1938,
was the documentation of a “4-family workers’ building”
with a built-up area of 206.5 m
2
and a cubic capacity
of 654.2 m
3
. The designed area of the segment was
43.76 m
2
. The two-room apartments consisted of a kitchen
(14.51 m
2
), a room (22.13 m
2
), a hall (2.86 m
2
) and
a pantry (4.26 m
2
). The entrance to the apartment led
through a hallway. From the hall you could go to the kitchen
and pantry. The fa mily room was accessible only through
the kitchen. A ladder through a hatch in the ceiling made
it possible to enter the attic. In addition, there was a cellar
under the pantry, accessible through a hatch in the oor,
and a chute led to it from the outside. The designed build-
ing had a log structure, external walls which were 12.5 cm
thick, internal structural walls which were 10 cm thick, and
partition walls consisting of two layers of boards. The roof
truss had a purlin-tie structure. The purlins were support-
ed by posts. The proposed roof covering was shingles. The
project also provided for the possibility of dierent roof-
ing, which was “dependent on local conditions” (Fig. 2)
2
.
A simple, compact body on a rectangular plan was covered
with a hip roof. The roof slope was broken at the eaves.
There were small dormers in the roof to illuminate the attic.
The entrance was accentuated by an open porch.
A typical project can be compared to the completed
quad in Czarna Białostocka (Fig. 3). The materials were
provided by eld research and a measurement inventory
of one segment of the quad. The area of the apartment
is about 43 m
2
. The apartment consists of the following
rooms: hall (3.2 m
2
), pantry (3.8 m
2
), kitchen (14.2 m
2
)
and room (21.8 m
2
). The height of the rooms was about
270 cm. From the hall it was possible to go to the kitchen
and to the pantry. A ladder led to the attic. In addition, there
was a small cellar under the pantry. A hatch in the oor
granted access to the cellar from the pantry, and from out-
side the building through a chute. The kitchen had a tiled
kitchen range. The room was accessible through the kitch-
en and was heated by a tiled stove. The architectural form
does not dier from the one proposed in the r2 project
3
.
The same or almost the same solutions were used in the
quads in Hajnówka (Fig. 4).
The utility program of the quads was complemented
by farm buildings. They consisted of two large rooms.
One was intended for storing lumber to be used for fuel,
the other for backyard breeding, mainly pigs and chick-
ens (Dużyński 2024). In addition, there were toilets in the
outbuilding. In the case of Czarna Białostocka, they were
placed in the body of the farm building (Fig. 5), while
in Hajnówka they were placed separately from the farm
2
From the descriptive part of the design of a typical 4-apartment
worker’s building, marked with the symbol r2 (source: Typowy pro-
jekt…, AAN in Warsaw, le no. 2/9/0/5.5/I 3955).
3
In some buildings, there were slight dierences, e.g., the form
of the window to the vestibule and pantry. Due to the reconstruction
of most buildings, it is dicult to determine in which buildings which
solutions were adopted.
