Building Home and Community in Warsaw: The Apartment Complexes of the Wawelberg Foundation for Affordable Housing

• In Event: New Jewish Neighborhoods in the Early Twentieth Century: Class, Gender, and Community

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of cities in the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century concerns arose about a lack of adequate housing. In particular, reformers bemoaned the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions of working class dwellings. One of the first to address these concerns was the Polish Jewish philanthropist Hipolit Wawelberg, who in 1897 created a Foundation for Affordable Housing to construct an apartment complex in the newly-developing Warsaw neighborhood of Wola. These building provided approximately 1,000 residents with modern living spaces as well as services including a laundry, medical clinic, and day care center. They were also intended to foster interreligious co-existence: half of the apartments were intended for Jews and half for Christians. Yet residents complained that even their subsidized rents were too high. Moreover, despite their sponsorship by a prominent Jewish figure the buildings’ inhabitants were overwhelmingly Christian Poles.
Despite this project’s failure to meet many of its stated goals, the foundation constructed a second complex a short distance away in the 1920s. This apartment block was intended for middle class residents and also housed amenities such as a reading room and hall for gymnastics. A floor was specially set aside as a residence for working women. This so-called “hearth” was designed to provide a substitute for the family home for single women perceived as vulnerable in the Polish capital.
In this paper I will discuss the extent to which these building projects met their various goals, including providing truly affordable housing as well as needed social services for both working and middle class residents. While they failed to successfully promote Jewish-Christian integration, I will consider to what extent they contributed to creating a distinct Jewish neighborhood in the Wola district. Finally, I will explore how they presented new visions of home and community that both challenged existing models and responded to changing conditions. In this way we can see how ideas about gender roles, family, and class were inscribed in the urban space of early twentieth century Warsaw.

Author

• Cecile Kuznitz, Bard College