Retracing my grandfather's footsteps

Yesterday I was speaking at a conference at the Społeczna Akademia Nauk on ul. Łucka 11, right across the street from where stood the tenement in which lived my father's family when he was born in 1923. On his baptismal certificate, the address was 'ul. Łucka number one thousand one hundred and fifty five', which for many years I assumed was a mistake. I assumed that it could not have been Łucka 11, flat 55, because between the wars, Łucka 11 was the Ostrowski brothers' coach-building factory; neither could it have been Łucka 1, flat 155, because Łucka 1 then - as today - standing on the corner of ul. Żelazna, could not have been divided into 155 flats.

But then last summer, the mystery was solved; reader Alojzy (thank you, Sir!) pointed out that Łucka 1155 was the numer hipoteczny, or mortgage number of the flat, which corresponds to an apartment within the tenement on Łucka 16. Today, that building is no longer there, replaced in the 1990s by a nondescript development of flats. But a little further east, the derelict apartment building at Łucka 10 is still there, awaiting demolition. Online, I cannot find any pictures of Łucka 16 before the war (there are photos of Łucka 12 and 14 on Wczoraj i Dzis blog, taken eight years ago).

My father's family moved in 1926 to a new apartment building for employees of PKO (which has its very own Wikipedia page).

This is Łucka 10 today, the last reminder of the architecture that would have been familiar to my grandparents before their move to posh Ochota. My father, being three at the time of the move, has no recollections from Łucka.

Below: view from across the street.

Below: view of the back from the eastern side...

Below: view of the back from the western side...

Below: photo taken from the Społeczna Akademia Nauk, looking east towards central Warsaw. In the foreground, the Norblin factory redevelopment is under way. A neat and tidy Skanska building site! In the middle distance, the cranes rising above Mennica Legacy Tower (a long way to go there).

I looked up the word 'oficyna' which for many years I took to be some kind of office (because of the association with oficyna wydawnicza = publishing house). It actually means 'annex' or 'outbuilding'.

After the conference, I walked back to my office along the same pavements that my grandfather would have walked on his way to his office on ul. Świętokrzyska, just a few hundred metres further than mine.

[Update, 30 July 2019: I take my father to ul. Łucka. We pass Łucka 10, we carry on to Łucka 16A. On a hunch, I turn off the street and go a bit further in, past the car park in front of Łucka 16A. And there it is! Łucka 16! We find it!

Not only has my father survived the war, but also the hospital in which he was born (ul. Lindlaya), the church in which he was christened (pl. Grzybowski), the flat in which he lived until he was four (ul. Łucka), and the flat in which he lived from the age of four until 3pm on 1 August 1944 (ul. Filtrowa). All in all, an incredible coincidence given that so much of Warsaw was flattened! His primary school (pl. Narutowicza), his first secondary school (ul. Śniadeckich) and his technical high school (Politechnika Warszawska) also survived - only his second secondary school, on the corner of ul. Świętokrzyska and ul. Jasna, has gone.


This time last year:
Keep-fit park opens in Jeziorki