The Reich and Birnbaum tenement house, Gdynia

Photograph of a staircase of the Reich and Birnbaum Tenement House - a modernist building located at 28 Antoni Abraham Street in Gdynia. The building was designed in 1936 by a graduate of the Lviv Polytechnic University, the Krakow architect Edward Fuhrschmied (born 1903), who, apart from the design, also supervised the construction of the tenement house; he settled there after the construction was completed (he stayed in Gdynia permanently until 1938, he died during World War II, probably in Lviv). The building was created for merchants Izrael Reich from Gdańsk and Wolf Birnbaum from Warsaw, co-shareholders of Dom Przemysłowo-Towarowy Józef Fetter Spółka Akcyjna. The project was carried out by the company Inżynierowie Oswald i Eliza Ungerowie i Jakubowicz (about the history of the Unger family, especially Eliza née Goldstein, see the interview: Anegdoty rodzinne. Z Józefem Andrzejem Ungerem rozmawia Przemysław Kaniecki [Family anecdotes. Przemysław Kaniecki talks with Józef Andrzej Unger], Midrasz 2016, no. 5, pp. 62-67).

The building combines the features of late functionalism in cubic forms with the trend of luxurious modernism of the 1930s. The big-city tenement house was characterized by the dominant horizontal elements of the division, elegant sandstone cladding, bright colours of ceramic tiles and innovative functional solutions: bathrooms lit through a skylight, a porch with a special shaft for dumping waste accessible from the staircase, and the first in Gdynia winter gardens located in the corners of the apartments. (https://sztetl.org.pl/he/towns/g/35-gdynia-gdynyh/113-hmvnvmntym-shl-trbvt-khvmryt/27735-kamienica-reicha-i-birnbauma-w-gdyni-ul -abraham-28). See also MPOLIN-M694.

JO