The exhibition “Village and Small Town” and the “Borderland Town” in Biłgoraj. Rescuing memory or falsifying the history of an image of a Polish traditional landscape

s. Anna Tejszerska uSJK

doi:10.37190/arc210105

Abstract

The aim of the article is the presentation and critical assessment of a development called “The town on the trail of cultures” or “Borderland Town” currently created in Biłgoraj. The main subject of the research is a contemporary composition, which is a free interpretation of historical architecture, in many respects far from factual credibility, but aspiring to be a tourist and cultural destination. The idea of building these houses and commercial properties was to replicate the traditional wooden small-town architecture of the region. Alongside them, of great interest to tourists, are replicas or copies of historic public buildings and places of worship, characteristic of the ethnic diversity of the eastern areas of the First and Second Polish Republic. The emerging district was evaluated in the context of the role of architecture in building local and national identity and the danger from an educational point of view, of falsifying history. The architectural form and urban layout of the project, as well as its ideational premises wa analysed. Special attention was paid to the noble objectives that accompanied the creation of the complex, and their convergence with the intentions of the architects who a century ago shaped the forms of the Polish national style. At the same time, the negative consequences of creating a peculiar hybrid of a historicizing but still contemporary composition and a kind of open-air museum, which should be characterized by reliable compliance with the facts, were shown. This type of procedure has led to creating an illusion of an authentic historic settlement, its falsification and popularisation of a distorted image of an historic town. The work was based on in-situstudies as well as analyses of archival illustrations and textual material and research into the authentic, historical architecture of the region, which was to serve as a model for the designed complex.

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2021

1(65)

DOI: 10.37190/arc210105

s. Anna Tejszerska uSJK*

The exhibition “Village and Small Town”

and the “Borderland Town” in Biłgoraj.

Rescuing memory or falsifying the history

of an image of a Polish traditional landscape

Introduction

With the shaping of national styles in the early 20

century, among the various functions and meanings as-

cribed to architecture, especially appreciated was its role

in the forming of an identity of a place, a country and a na-

tion. When in 1915 the Polish Architects’ Club prepared

an Exhibition of Polish Architecture called “The Village

and Small Town”, the organisers of the project aimed to

preserve the forms of traditional Polish construction that

were disappearing. They wanted to keep the memory of

the architectural heritage and reveal it to contemporary

designers as a source of inspiration and a model for cre-

ativity. In a similar vein, during the reconstruction of the

country after the devastation of the Great War

, “fami liar”

forms were strongly promoted. Despite the eorts of the

contemporary architectural community, both the progress

of civilization and disasters of the 20

century made the

typical Polish town and its landscape presented at the ex-

hibition a thing of the past. The only remnants of it are

solitary, frequently renovated buildings and historical il-

lustrations. The idea of saving the image of a traditional

provincial urban layout is reected in a somewhat con-

troversial way in the contemporary concept of the “Bor-

derland Town” in Biłgoraj. The housing-services concept

* ORCID: 0000-0001-7872-4496. Faculty of Natural Sciences and

Health, the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, e-mail: anna.

tejszerska@kul.pl

Currently, the term Great War is not commonly used. After the

out break of World War II, the one that was formerly called great was

called the rst. The author decided to use the nomenclature used in the

period in question.

constitutes a contemporary composition, referring in

a simplied and supercial way to the traditional wooden

provincial architecture and urban planning of the region.

It is supplemented with replicas or copies of historical

public utility buildings and objects of worship, char-

acteristic of the ethnic wealth of Eastern Poland. These

have become tourist attractions. The investment does

not have the value of historical authenticity. The actions

taken within it do not t strictly into the work of saving

material heritage, although the authors’ intention is to

contribute to the saving of the memory of the past shape

of Polish landscape. The aim of the article is to present the

results of a multifaceted analysis and critical evaluation

of the Biłgoraj complex. There are no published studies

yet on the investment, which is still at the implementa-

tion stage. However, several items cited later in this article

are devoted to the region’s disappearing authentic wood-

en architecture and its history. The topic of authenticity

in architecture has been discussed many times, mainly

in relation to historic buildings and their partial or full

reconstruction

Numerous conferences and scientic sessions have been devoted

to the issue of authenticity, including those co-organised by the Polish

National Committee of International Council on Monuments and Sites

ICOMOS: Authenticity in architectural conservation up to the mid-

century (2012), Authenticity in architectural conservation (2013),

Authenticity and the palimpsest of conserved monuments (2015), Au-

thenticity and reconstruction in conservation research and work (Con-

servator’s Forum 2016); Authenticity and valuing architectural heritage

(Conservator’s Forum 2017). It is also worth mentioning a few sample

texts at this point. Studies related to the issue have been published in the

form of single articles (e.g., [1], [2]), whole journal issues devoted to the

topic (e.g., [3]) and collective monographs (e.g., [4]).

40 s. Anna Tejszerska

From the tradition of “wood construction”

The historical landscape of Poland, due to its geograph-

ical and environmental location, was largely shaped by

wooden constructions. This applies to both rural and ur-

ban – in later centuries mainly small-town – residential,

sacral and communal architecture, excluding monumental

buildings. Marian Kornecki emphasizes that initially […]

all buildings were erected here from wood, and over time

some of their types were gradually constructed in other

materials [5, p. 170].

Only in the 1

quarter of the 20

century, during the re-

construction of the country after World War I, it became

doubtful whether, in view of the plundering of forests carried

out by the partitioning powers and the losses caused by res

during the war, wood would still remain the basic building

material of reconstructed and newly erected buildings. Ad-

ditionally the introduction and more common use of bricks

and concrete blocks has to be taken into account (more:

[6, p. 313], [7, pp. 64–67]). Nevertheless, even in the rst

years of the 2

half of the 20

century, a signicant number

of small-town buildings, especially in central and eastern

Poland (Mazovia, Lublin, Podlasie) were made of wood.

Currently, these buildings are the subject of interest of

many researchers, mainly in the context of the problem of

saving an increasingly shrinking, although still large, group

of historical structures, in a varied state of preservation

(broader: [8]).

The problem of the fragility of this type of heritage was

noticed already over a hundred years ago. Zygmunt Gloger

(1845–1910) in the introduction to his encyclopaedic work

writes: […] having by around 1870 over a hundred drawings

of […] of wooden buildings in pre-partition Poland, I saw

how over the next few years almost all of them disappeared

completely, either as a result of res or demolished because

of old age [9, p. 3]. Hieronim Łopaciński (1860–1906) stat-

ed in a similar vein: […] monuments of wooden construction

in Poland, characterized by simplicity, and at the same time

by beautiful and pleasing shapes and exquisite familiar or-

namentation, are becoming increasingly rare. Fires, imper-

manence of the material, fashion, and nally the demands of

the present moment are destroying what we admired yester-

day. […] not only every year, but almost every day sees the

destruction of these remnants of the old Polish style, reduc-

es the number of already scarce wooden buildings from the

past centuries [10, pp. 372, 374]. Growing awareness of the

disappearance of traditional forms of construction and at the

same time appreciation of their assets and cultural values,

resulted in the construction of the rst open-air museums

at that time [11, pp. 99, 100, 102]. At the same time, eorts

were not abandoned to maintain a certain character of tradi-

tional forms of construction in modern buildings.

“Homeliness” as an architectural value

in the past and today

At the end of the 19

century in the whole of Europe, but

especially Central and Eastern Europe, there was a search

for so-called national styles, characterized by a certain in -

dividuality, drawn from the designs of local building tra-

ditions. People were looking for a model of architecture

rooted in the so-called native shapes, but far from direct

copying and duplication of historical objects. It was a pe-

riod of probing one’s own history of architecture in terms

of forms that would be most characteristic of a region or

country. And at the same time, it was a period in which an

immeasurable role in building, maintaining and rebuild-

ing national identity was attributed to architecture, like to

other elds of art. This was particularly important at that

time in the situation of external enslavement and the nal

stage of the road to independence, as well as the start of

building a reborn Republic of Poland.

Immediately after the rst wave of destructions in the

Great War, when the fate of Poland was still far from being

nally decided, a group of architects faced the challenge

of rebuilding the country and prepared a series of publica-

tions of model projects referring in their character to the

traditional forms of our construction [12]–[14]

. Somewhat

anticipating the reconstruction, in 1915 a team of archi-

tects from Krakow and Warsaw organised an Exhibition of

Polish Architecture “The Village and Town”, crowned by

a richly illustrated album of photographs of various types

of buildings from dierent regions of Poland [18]. Civiliza-

tional changes and the cataclysm of the next war made the

images of a typical Polish town landscape presented at the

1915 exhibition a thing of the past. A research tour conduct-

ed a few years after the World War II by Stanisław Herbst,

Adam Miłobędzki and Wojciech Kalinowski in the south-

ern part of the Lublin region yielded an inexorably unequi-

vocal result: […] all compact complexes of arcaded houses

in this area were destroyed during the two last world wars

and only in some villages single buildings have survived,

either heavily damaged or completely rebuilt [19, p. 111].

Today, one hundred years after the end of the Great War,

in reaction to the phenomena of globalisation and unica-

tion, there is a renewed emphasis on the role of local cul-

tural dierences. The New Athens Charter, published by the

European Council of Town Planners, sets out in its very rst

paragraphs a vision […] of [21

century] cities which pre-

serve the richness and cultural diversity of their long histo-

ry and skilfully combine their present and future with their

past [20, “Introduction”]. Also the development of cultural

tourism contributes to the appreciation of characteristic,

separate, identity-dening urban and architectural complex-

es, of which Kazimierz on the Vistula River is an excellent

example. It owes its undoubted success to its preserved lo-

cal specicity, although it is threatened by new investments.

The “Borderland Town” in Biłgoraj

Currently, more than a century after the above-men-

tioned exhibition “The Village and Small Town” and the

publishing of model architectural publications, an invest-

ment is being developed that in some way refers to them.

In the south-eastern corner of the Lublin region, an area

Earlier, in 1913. Stefan Szyller (1857–1933) in a series of lectures

presented the characteristic features of architecture of individual regions

of the country [15], [16]. In 1915 a lecture by the same author was pub-

lished on strictly wooden construction [17].

“Village and Small Town” and the “Borderland Town” 41

with a very strong and until recently practised tradition of

wooden building trades, a model called the “Borderland

Town”(“Kresowe miasteczko”)

is being established. The

foundation “Biłgoraj XXI”, at the initiative and largely

funded by a private person

is building an architectural

complex, which in terms of external form, uses tradit ional

materials and construction methods. To some extent it re-

sembles an open-air museum. It is not a strictly museum-

like concept, similar to the contemporary reconstructions

of fragments of small towns found in open-air museums in

Lublin or Sanok. The investors intend the Biłgoraj

“town”

to be a “hybrid” of an open-air museum and a residen-

tial-service district – a museum “living its own new life”.

Following the typical historical model of urban devel-

opment, the rst oors of the market buildings have been

designed as residential areas, and most of the ground oors

have been planned for commercial premises. The essence

and main attraction of the complex is a comprehensive,

albeit supercial, return to historical architectural and ur-

ban forms. The arcaded houses currently form three mar-

ket frontages of more than 70 metres. A fourth, closing the

layout from the southern side, is still under construction.

The buildings were designed by arch. Rudolf Buchalik,

The multi-layered term Kresy, interpreted in various ways in dif-

ferent periods of the history of the Polish Republic, carries a signicant

emotional potential, which – one gets the impression – was used for

promotional and marketing purposes. After all, Biłgoraj does not belong

to Kresy (in any of the historical meanings of the term).

It is a partially commercial investment, initiated and invested by

Tadeusz Kuźmiński.

using patterns of regional wooden architecture, character-

istic for particular towns of the Lublin region (Biłgoraj,

Goraj, Frampol, Józefów). The juxtaposition of architec-

tural forms collected from the wider area is somewhat

reminiscent of an open-air museum display. Nevertheless,

in historic towns individual houses retained a considerable

degree of individuality (cf. [21, p. 5]). Compared to the

richness of the successively emerging forms of authentic

houses built by owners of dierent material status, the se-

quence of gabled buildings in the frontage of the Biłgoraj

project shows a high degree of monotony. The height

equalization of the ridges, roof eaves lines, and storeys of

all frontage segments leads to the impression of architec-

tural monoculture (Fig. 1).

The authors of the investment referred in their project

to arcaded buildings, typical for market squares in Polish

towns of the 17

–19

and early 20

centuries (cf. [21, pp.

6, 7]). Indeed, arcades were one of the characteristic fea-

tures of small-town architecture in the Republic of Poland.

The album “The Village and Small Town” contains as

many as 25 photographs of this type of buildings (Fig. 2).

They were highlighted in publications by Zygmunt Glo -

ger and Stefan Szyller. The latter emphasised their impor-

tance in shaping the “national landscape”. We have already

mentioned [he wrote] the arcaded houses, chara cte ristic

of Polish architecture, which Matejko immortalised with

his brilliant pencil as old Jewish houses in Wiśnicz and

which also existed in Piotrków before the re destroyed

them, in Warsaw there were houses in Powiśle, they exist

in Rakoniewice in Poznańskie, in Kazimierz on the Vistu-

la, in Abramowice near Lublin, in Grodek in

Podole, in

Fig. 1. Biłgoraj,

“Borderland Town”,

market square, northern frontage

(photo by A. Tejszerska, 2018)

Il. 1. Biłgoraj,

„Kresowe miasteczko”, rynek,

pierzeja północna

(fot. A. Tejszerska, 2018)

Fig. 2. Arcaded buildings of the Lublin region market squares (source: [18])

Il. 2. Podcieniowa zabudowa rynków Lubelszczyzny (źródło: [18])

42 s. Anna Tejszerska

Fig. 4. Biłgoraj, “Borderland Town”, market square, western frontage

(photo by A. Tejszerska, 2018)

Il. 4. Biłgoraj, „Kresowe miasteczko”, rynek, pierzeja zachodnia

(fot. A. Tejszerska, 2018)

Jabłonków in Silesia, in Muszyna near Krynica etc., etc.

in all lands inhabited by Poles. These arcades were and

still are used in cottages and manors of noblemen, hous-

es of poor and wealthy townsmen, forming long galleries

along streets or around market squares [15, pp. 579, 580].

Czesław Thullie (1888–1976) emphasized that: […] the

architectural motif of the arcades is as old as Poland is

[22, p. 119], and the authors of the “memorandum on the

reconstruction of cities, towns and villages” encouraged

its use in erected buildings [23, p. 26]. The poor state of

preservation of historical arcaded houses means that today

the basic research materials remain illustrations. Never-

theless, even on their basis it was possible to determine the

existence of many types of such buildings, characteristic

for the region. Jan Górak lists the following arcades: lon-

gitudinal, gable, corner and anking the central niche. Ad

exemplum: in the centre of Łaszczów stood both wooden

arcades and brick buildings with wooden arcades added,

separated from each other by 1.5-metre “nipples”. The

square in Modliborzyce was surrounded by houses with

longitudinal arcades with brick columns, covered with

roofs of dierent shapes. In the Szczebrzeszyn market as

late as 1917 there were only wooden houses with longitu-

dinal arcades, whereas the photographs from the inter-war

period show buildings with gable arcades [21, pp. 20, 21].

In the frontage of the Krzeszów market square before the

Great War there were gable arcaded houses covered with

half-hip, gablet and hip roofs. Before the First World War

Krasnobród had a square-shaped market square where each

frontage had dierent forms of arcaded houses, most of

which were gable-ended. There were also storey houses

or houses with habitable lofts. Only one of the frontages

had a homogeneous type of building with ve-pillar ga-

ble houses, and after the war reconstruction – three-pil-

lar arcades. In the other three frontages, the houses had

very diverse forms [19, pp. 114, 115]. In most cases, indi-

vidual buildings formed separate segments, which made

their arcades, using contemporary nomenclature, belong to

semi-private or private space. The frontages in the mar-

ket square of the Biłgoraj investment form a monolithic

whole, they resemble sequences of brick galleries, arcaded

cloisters performing the function of a passage (Fig. 3). In

addition, the terraced, monolithic three- or four-bay ar-

cades of the individual houses are distinguished by only

slightly dierentiated repetitive elements of regional car-

pentry. The diversity of individual buildings comes down

primarily to the use of several types of gable forms. Only

the western frontage is more dierentiated (Fig. 4). A con-

cept unusual in an authentic functional layout of historic

houses was the placement of arcades on two opposite sides

the buildings – both at the front and at the back – in a way

resembling Greek amphiprostilos. Hiero nim Łopaciński,

summarizing the building activity in Wrzelowiec near Lu-

blin, emphasized that […] the houses recently erected […]

here have [traditional] arcades on pillars […], however the

plan of these houses is already dierent [10, p. 376]. Thus,

maybe this unprecedented concept can be considered as

the next stage in the evolution of arcaded buildings.

If the Biłgoraj investment was only a contemporary

residential complex using formal references to the local

building tradition (use of historical urban layout, gable po-

sitioning of houses in the market frontage, half-hip roofs,

arcades, porches in the attics; cf. [19, pp. 112–116]), it

could be considered one of the typical realizations in the

spirit of new urbanism, which by no means require histor-

ical delity. The proponents of this trend build residential

and commercial complexes in a variety of ways drawing

on the local tradition, which nds expression in the com-

positions with postmodern overtones that combine the

present with the past, based on the traditional repertoire

of forms. Notable examples of such a solution are Borgo

Città Nuova in Alessandria and the English Poundbury

Fig. 3. Biłgoraj,

“Borderland Town”,

market square, eastern frontage

(photo by A. Tejszerska, 2018)

Il. 3. Biłgoraj,

„Kresowe miasteczko”, rynek,

pierzeja wschodnia

(fot. A. Tejszerska, 2018)

“Village and Small Town” and the “Borderland Town” 43

Fig. 5. Poundbury, Cambridge Walk – city centre – market square,

(photo by J. Kamiński, 2012)

Il. 5. Poundbury, pasaż Cambridge – rynek

(fot. J. Kamiński, 2012)

inventory drawn up under the supervision of Oskar Sos-

nowski in the 1930s

. The accurate reconstruction of the

synagogue building, despite the fact that it was built in

a place unconnected with the original construction, can

be evaluated positively in the context of cultural-preser-

vation activities undertaken as part of the development of

open-air museums. (Especially as out of so many wooden

synagogues in the Republic of Poland none survived the

German occupation). Jan Zachwatowicz’s statement may

justify such actions: […] the reconstruction of monuments

in Poland after the devastation of the last war created

a special scope of activity, which does not t into the cat-

egories of established notions of protection, conservation,

or even restoration of historical objects and complexes,

namely their partial or full reconstruction. The motiva-

tion to undertake this activity resulted from […] the as-

pirations of the society to restore, even in a reconstructed

form, the monuments of culture, barbarously destroyed by

the Nazis, in a conscious action of liquidation of Polish

culture [25, p. 13], (more: [26, p. 101]). It is worth re-

membering that wooden synagogues were a characteris-

tic element of the urban structure of the First and Second

Polish Republics. If we want to get to know Polish culture

The awareness of the value of architectural heritage and its tran-

sience, accompanying architects at the beginning of the 20

century, es-

pecially in view of the losses of the Great War, resulted, among other

things, in intensied documentation work. Oskar Sosnowski, the founder

and head (from 1923) of the Polish Architecture Department of the Ar-

chitecture Faculty at the Warsaw University of Technology, with the par-

ticipation of his students, did a tremendous job of making an inventory of

a number of historic buildings in Warsaw – which was invaluable source

material during its reconstruction. The photographic documentation of

the synagogue in Wołpa was drawn up by Szymon Zajczyk (1900–1944),

who cooperated with the Department of Polish Architecture of the War-

saw University of Technology and the Oce for Monuments’ Inventory.

Measurements and photographs of several dozen synagogues, including

several wooden ones, have survived in the Department. Inventory mea-

surements, under the direction of Szymon Zajczyk, were taken by students

of the Faculty of Architecture as part of their mandatory practice [24].

(Fig. 5). In this type of complexes only the architectural

quality can be assessed, not the historical correctness. In

the Biłgoraj investment, it is necessary to appreciate the

fact that the buildings were covered with aspen shingles,

and the traditional construction and use of wood gave the

complex a familiar atmosphere. Just as the trend of new

urbanism was born in the face of the problems of modern

cities, so the “Borderland Town” was created as a kind of

protest against the ugliness of post-war buildings, which

replaced the wooden historical buildings. In this con-

text, unfortunately, the opportunity was missed to expose

and link with the newly designed complex the authentic

1810 Sitar Homestead located nearby and now serving as

a “real” small open-air museum (Fig. 6).

The problem with the Biłgoraj project is that it aspires

to be a cultural investment. It bases its success on very

strong, though supercial historical references, builds an

illusion of an authentic concept, and becomes a kind of

falsication. Its negative impact on the educational level

is exacerbated by its function as a centre of cultural tour-

ism, which is to be served by the other facilities created

within its framework.

Cultural attractions of the concept

According to the investor’s intention, the biggest at-

traction of the current stage of construction is the replica

of the wooden synagogue from Volpa in the Grodno re-

gion, built in 1648 and considered to be the most beauti-

ful in the Second Republic of Poland (Fig. 7). It was de-

stroyed by the Germans in 1941. A detailed description of

it was given by Zygmunt Gloger: The synagogue is 24 1/2

metres long by 20 metres wide. In the middle there is an

octagonal dome supported by four great pillars […]. The

height of the nave from the oor to the top of the octagonal

dome is about 30 meters [9, pp. 32, 33]. While the front-

age buildings of the market square are the application of

a contemporary project based on local historical patterns,

the synagogue is a replica, made on the basis of a detailed

Fig. 6. Biłgoraj, open-air museum “Sievemakers Farm”, front elevation

(photo by A. Tejszerska, 2020)

Il. 6. Biłgoraj, skansen „Sitarska zagroda”, front

(fot. A. Tejszerska, 2020)

44 s. Anna Tejszerska

[ Szyszko-Bohusz advised students of the Lviv Polytech-

nic], let us turn from the monuments which resemble the

canons of pan-European art the least, to the most independ-

ent ones, and such are our monuments from the 17

and

centuries: churches, chapels, manors and mansions,

and

nally synagogues, which perhaps contain the most

Polishness [27, p. 18]. A few decades later a similar thesis

was put forward by Marian Kornecki, who wrote: […] they

[synagogues] echoed in some way the already lost grand

wooden country palaces, transposing the forms of the de-

veloped Baroque into the native technique [5, p. 174]. Also

Hieronim Łopaciński mentions wooden synagogues as one

of the most characteristic objects of the Polish landscape:

[…] surviving houses in our towns and villages, old gra-

naries, very rare storage houses, larch churches remaining

in rural retreats, synagogues in towns – these are the spec-

imens of the Polish style in building [10, p. 374].

A surprising planning decision of the Biłgoraj project

was to locate the replica of the synagogue in the middle

of the market square (Fig. 8). Such a solution is not con-

rmed by traditional city plans. It is a contemporary idea,

probably based on the assumption that the most attractive

object should be placed in the very centre of the complex.

It did not take into account the fact that market squares

performed commercial and administrative functions, the

nature of which was incompatible with the sacral func-

tion. Catholic churches were built not far from the mar-

ket square in the vicinity of corner plots, but never in the

middle of the square, while synagogues occupied plots

further away, in Jewish quarters

. Mid-market buildings,

found mainly in larger cities, were not related to the re-

ligious function. Incidentally, in Volpa itself, the town

square did not have any mid-market buildings. According

to the available illustrative material, the synagogue stood

on a property fenced o with a rail fence, in the vicinity of

individual, not very impressive houses.

Equally bizarre is the justication for the location of the

synagogue by giving the main square the name of a Jewish

market, especially in the context of a clear reference of the

market’s form to the regular urban layout of the centres of

towns in the region

. As a result, the next planned parts of

the complex were assigned the names of the Polish and

commercial market (Fig. 9). This, again in the context of

the tourist and cultural function and its educational role, is

Even in Łaszczów, where Jews constituted 95% of the popula-

tion, the synagogue stood on the outskirts of the town.

The layout forms a regular urban arrangement – as characteristic

for small towns in the southern Lublin region as the arcaded buildings

themselves.

Fig. 7. Biłgoraj,

“Borderland Town”,

replica of the synagogue

from Wołpa, southern façade

(photo by A. Tejszerska, 2020)

Il. 7. Biłgoraj,

„Kresowe miasteczko”,

replika synagogi z Wołpy,

elewacja południowa

(fot. A. Tejszerska, 2020)

Fig. 8. Biłgoraj,

“Borderland Town”,

view of the market square

from the southwest corner

(photo by A. Tejszerska, 2018)

Il. 8. Biłgoraj,

„Kresowe miasteczko”,

widok rynku z południowo-

-zachodniego narożnika

(fot. A. Tejszerska, 2018)

“Village and Small Town” and the “Borderland Town” 45

a falsication of history, from which we know the concept

of a market (in the sense of the main market), salt market,

water market, or new town, but not Polish and Jewish.

Throughout the project there is a noticeable emphasis on

Jewish culture, justied by the pre-war population struc-

ture of Biłgoraj

and the close ties with the city of the No-

bel Prize winner Isaac Singer (1902–1991). The western

frontage of the market contains “Singer’s house”, which

is the museum of the foundation of his name and which

was reconstructed on the basis of memories and archival

images of it.

The identity of the borderland cities of the Republic of

Poland was created by a mixture of ethnicity, nationality

and religion. In the long run, the construction of more re-

ligious buildings is planned. This includes a copy of the

wooden Orthodox church of Rudka

erected in 1693. The

complex, together with the presbytery and the bell tower,

will serve as a museum of icons and a venue for Orthodox

music concerts. There are also plans to relocate a wood-

en Catholic church from Tworyczów near Szczebrzeszyn

(Fig. 10), to be used as a museum of Christianity, which

may not evoke the best associations with the Stalinist

period and the introduction of museums of atheism within

the church walls

. The construction of a Calvinist church

or even a mosque is also considered – as the Biłgoraj re-

gion was inhabited not only by Poles, Jews, Armenians

and Ruthenians, but also by many Tatars. The problem of

60% of the inhabitants were of the Jewish faith.

Przeworski County. In the project, the Church of the Dormition

of the Blessed Virgin Mary is described as Orthodox, although in fact it

is still used by Greek Catholics.

The wooden “old” church in Tworyczów no longer has a sacred

function. In the 1980s, a new church was erected vis-à-vis it, designed

by the author of the Biłgoraj foundation.

all religious buildings of the emerging complex is the lack

of cult functions in them. Both the synagogue, which has

already been erected, and the buildings which remain in

the sphere of plans are intended only as cultural objects:

museums, galleries and concert halls. It is worth draw-

ing a comparison with the Lublin Village Museum, where

both the wooden Catholic church relocated from Matczyn

and the Greek Catholic church relocated from Tarnoszyn

serve the local community. Despite the fact that they are

located on premises of the museum, they have not lost

their essence, they remain what they always were, they

retain their authenticity, they are not external shells cover-

ing new functions. Historical sacral architecture, fullling

its basic purpose, is in itself an important element of cul-

tural heritage as well as a tourist destination. However, to

designate a religious building as a museum of Christianity

in a country in which 93.7% of the population declares

itself to belong to the Catholic Church [28, p. 82] seems

hardly justied. Also for Jewish Orthodox circles visiting

the town the fact of erecting a replica of the synagogue for

purely cultural purposes – the Museum of Biłgoraj Jews

– remains controversial.

As part of the development of the tourist infrastructure

of the “town”, the construction of buildings with hotel,

catering, rehabilitation and bio-regenerative functions

is planned, historically clothed in a way that constitutes

the ideological essence of the complex. Inscribing a new

function in forms suggesting a dierent purpose of the

building has always been controversial. As early as 1913

Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz asked: […] can there be greater

nonsense than a railway station in Romanesque style,

a beer hall modelled on a Gothic castle or a doorkeep-

er’s house in the shape of a Greek temple [27, p. 15]. The

planned objects can be regarded as a kind of architectur-

al pastiche, deprived of the value of authenticity both in

Fig. 9. Biłgoraj,

“Borderland Town”, diagram

of planned estate segments

(drawing by A. Tejszerska

based on the Local Spatial

Development Plan

of Biłgoraj 2019)

Il. 9. Biłgoraj,

„Kresowe miasteczko”, schemat

rozkładu planowanych

segmentów zespołu

(rys. A. Tejszerska na podkładzie

załącznika do MPZP

Biłgoraj 2019)

46 s. Anna Tejszerska

References

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nie na wartość autentyzmu zabytku – dokument z Nara jako próba

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terms of the material fabric and the introduced function,

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reality. It should be realized that cultural tourism, which

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reality, is a form of education of the highest value in terms

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nitely has a stronger impact on the recipient than theoreti-

cal information presented in book publications.

Conclusions

Authentic wooden buildings are of immeasurable cul-

tural value, which is being saved by numerous conserva-

tion projects and programmes

. However, their number is

constantly decreasing. Therefore, irrespective of conser-

vation eorts, since the turn of the 19

and 20

centuries

eorts have been made to promote formal stylistic conti-

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the Lublin region, Jan Górak expresses his hope that the

reminder of the traditional forms […] will be an inspira-

For example, the “Wooden Treasure” project covering the heri-

tage of the Lublin region.

tion to use them in the contemporary shaping of the new

landscape [29, p. 67]. The concept of building the “Bor-

derland Town” was accompanied by a noble goal, which

reected the architectural postulates of a century ago. At

the same time, the idea seems to meet the public longing

for forms rooted in tradition. After all […] the element of

familiarity is for every nation the most important moment

in artistic creation [30, p. 104]. The originator of the in-

vestment treats it as an antidote to the expressionless ar-

chitecture, which disgured the region in the 1970s. Grey,

monotonous, monstrous blocks of ats are haunting in the

cities where beautiful buildings used to dominate, like in

Biłgoraj and its surroundings. I decided to try to save this

memory from complete oblivion [31]. Unfortunately, the

connection of the tourist-cultural function with the lack

of historical delity, a kind of falsication and creation

of illusion of historical buildings contributes to the dis-

tortion of the image of the historical town in the memory

of visitors. The contemporary composition, which is only

a free interpretation of historical buildings, plays here the

role of an open museum, which should be characterized

by fact-based credibility.

Translated by

Wiktoria Krzykowska

Fig. 10. Tworyczów, church of St. Apostles Peter and Paul (1932–1933): a) façade, b) east elevation (photo by A. Tejszerska, 2020)

Il. 10. Tworyczów, kościół pw. św. Apostołów Piotra i Pawła (1932–1933): a) fasada, b) elewacja wschodnia (fot. A. Tejszerska, 2020)

a b

“Village and Small Town” and the “Borderland Town” 47

Abstract

The exhibition “Village and Small Town” and the “Borderland Town” in Biłgoraj.

Rescuing memory or falsifying the history of an image of a Polish traditional landscape

The aim of the article is the presentation and critical assessment of a development called “The town on the trail of cultures” or “Borderland

Town” currently created in Biłgoraj. The main subject of the research is a contemporary composition, which is a free interpretation of historical

architecture, in many respects far from factual credibility, but aspiring to be a tourist and cultural destination. The idea of building these houses and

commercial properties was to replicate the traditional wooden small-town architecture of the region. Alongside them, of great interest to tourists, are

replicas or copies of historic public buildings and places of worship, characteristic of the ethnic diversity of the eastern areas of the First and Second

Polish Republic. The emerging district was evaluated in the context of the role of architecture in building local and national identity and the danger,

from an educational point of view, of falsifying history. The architectural form and urban layout of the project, as well as its ideational premises was

analysed. Special attention was paid to the noble objectives that accompanied the creation of the complex, and their convergence with the intentions

of the architects who a century ago shaped the forms of the Polish national style. At the same time, the negative consequences of creating a peculiar

hybrid of a historicizing but still contemporary composition and a kind of open-air museum, which should be characterized by reliable compliance

with the facts, were shown. This type of procedure has led to creating an illusion of an authentic historic settlement, its falsication and popularisation

of a distorted image of an historic town. The work was based on in-situ studies as well as analyses of archival illustrations and textual material and

research into the authentic, historical architecture of the region, which was to serve as a model for the designed complex.

Key words: open-air museum, pastiche in architecture, historical Polish landscape, wooden architecture, Biłgoraj

Streszczenie

„Wieś i miasteczko” a „miasteczko kresowe”.

Ratowanie pamięci czy falsykacja historycznego krajobrazu Polski

Celem artykułu jest prezentacja i wieloaspektowa, krytyczna ocena realizowanej obecnie w Biłgoraju inwestycji określanej mianem „miasteczka

na szlaku kultur” bądź „miasteczka kresowego”. Przedmiotowe założenie to współczesna kompozycja stanowiąca wolną interpretację zabudowy

historycznej, pod wieloma względami daleka od faktogracznej wiarygodności, a pretendująca do roli destynacji turystyczno-kulturowej. Miesz-

kaniowo-usługowe założenie, nawiązujące zewnętrzną formą do tradycyjnej drewnianej małomiasteczkowej architektury regionu, uzupełniane jest

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48 s. Anna Tejszerska

– stanowiącymi atrakcje turystyczne – replikami bądź kopiami historycznych obiektów użyteczności publicznej i kultu, charakterystycznych dla

etnicznego bogactwa wschodnich obszarów I i II Rzeczypospolitej. Powstający kompleks oceniono zarówno w kontekście roli architektury w bu-

dowaniu tożsamości lokalnej i narodowej, jak i niebezpieczeństwa zafałszowania historii na płaszczyźnie edukacyjnej. Analizie poddano formę

architektoniczną, układ urbanistyczny i ideowe przesłanki założenia. Zwrócono uwagę na szczytne cele towarzyszące powstaniu kompleksu i ich

zbieżność z zamierzeniami architektów kształtujących przed stu laty formy polskiego stylu narodowego. Jednocześnie wykazano negatywne kon-

sekwencje kształtowania swoistej hybrydy historyzującej, ale współczesnej kompozycji z rodzajem skansenu, który powinna cechować rzetelna

zgodność z faktograą. Tego typu zabieg doprowadził do stworzenia iluzji autentycznej zabytkowej osady, falsykacji oraz popularyzacji zniekształ-

conego obrazu historycznego miasta. Poza analizą in situ, w pracy wykorzystano archiwalny materiał ilustracyjny i tekstowy oraz wyniki badań

autentycznej historycznej zabudowy regionu, która stanowić miała wzorzec projektowanego założenia.

Słowa kluczowe: skansen, pastisz w architekturze, historyczny krajobraz Polski, architektura drewniana, Biłgoraj