Rudolf Kern Building

Rudolf Kern Tenement is a habitation building located at 1 Mickiewicz Alley, in Bydgoszcz, Poland. It has been inscribed on the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship Heritage List.

The building stands on the eastern side of Gdańska Street at the intersection with Mickiewicz Alley.

It stands close to remarkable tenements in the same street:

• Alfred Schleusener Tenement at 62;
• Józef Święcicki tenement at 63;
• Eduard Schulz Tenement at 66/68;
• Tenement at 71 Gdańska street;
• Tenement at 75 Gdańska street;
• Ernst Bartsch tenement at 79;
• Paul Storz Tenement at 81.

On the plot, before the current building, there was a tavern (German: wirtschaft), managed by Emil Manthei^[2]

This made the area prone to leisure, emphasized by the presence, since the end of the 19th century, of a theatre and a restaurant on the other side of the intersection (at 66-68 Gdańska street).

The house was built in 1903–1904, designed by the architect Rudolf Kern, a student of Józef Święcicki who also erected or redesigned other buildings in Gdańska Street:^[3]

• August Mentzel Tenement at 5;
• Eduard Schulz Tenement at 66/68;
• Tenement at 71 Gdańska street.

Rudolf Kern originally erected the tenement for his own use, private and business. He lived there until 1922.

The building will soon accommodate a four-star hotel, including a gastronomic restaurant, with recreational and commercial areas.^[4]

The building has a decorative Art Nouveau facade. It has four main floors and one hidden in the upper roof. In a way its size balances the symmetry with the opposite building.^[5]

It is characterized by an asymmetric arrangement of loggia and bays, typical decorative elements including leaf and tendril motifs, intertwined organic forms, mostly curvaceous in shape.^[5]

Notable elements:

• low-relief adorned portal;
• large threatening masks on the facade;
• many interior design original elements such as staircase, stained glass, woodwork.

The building has been put on the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Heritage List Nr.601377 Reg.A/1086, on 20 November 1995.^[1]

• 
  Frontage onto Mickiewicz alley
• 
  Art Nouveau detail
• 
  Masked faces on the facade
• 
  Detail of the portal
• 
  Detail of the carved door
• 
  Detail of a bow window
• 
  Detail of a motif

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1 Mickiewicza Avenue in Bydgoszcz.

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