Rudolf Kern Building

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 N°62;
• Józef Święcicki tenement at N°63;
• Eduard Schulz Tenement at N°66-68;
• Tenement at 71 Gdanska street;
• Tenement at 75 Gdanska street;
• Ernst Bartsch tenement at N°79;
• Paul Storz Tenement at N°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 N°5;
• Eduard Schulz Tenement at N°66-68;
• Tenement at 71 Gdanska street.

Rudolf Kern has originally erected the tenement for his own use, private and business: he has 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, with a large and impressive building consisting of 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 N°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.

• Bydgoszcz
• Gdanska Street in Bydgoszcz
• Rudolf Kern
• (in Polish) Downtown district in Bydgoszcz

• Art Nouveau in Bydgoszcz

• (in Polish) Bręczewska-Kulesza Daria, Derkowska-Kostkowska Bogna, Wysocka A. (2003). Ulica Gdańska. Przewodnik historyczny. Bydgoszcz: Wojewódzki Ośrodek Kultury w Bydgoszczy. ISBN 9788386970100.

Panorama on Gdanska Street intersection with Mickiewicz alley, the building on the left