Wacław Michniewicz (; 15 October 1866 – 14 January 1947) was a Polish-Lithuanian architect active in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

, Lithuania.

Early life and education

Wacław Michniewicz was born on 15 October 1866 in the village of (

Pabaiskas Pabaiskas is a small town in Ukmergė district of Vilnius County, Lithuania, south-west of Ukmergė, with 249 inhabitants. The Battle of Vilkmergė took place here in 1435, when Sigismund Kestutaitis defeated Švitrigaila and his Livonian Orde ...

parish), around south of

Ukmergė Ukmergė (; previously ''Vilkmergė''; ) is a city in Vilnius County, Lithuania, located northwest of Vilnius. It is the administrative center of the Ukmergė District Municipality. Ukmergė (Vilkmergė) was mentioned for the first time as a ...

. At that time, Lithuania part of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. He graduated from the Russian Real School in Vilnius in 1888, then studied at the in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

. He graduated in 1893 and returned to Vilnius.

Career

In Vilnius, Michniewicz was first an assistant to Cyprian Maculewicz, then from 1904 an architect and chief engineer of the city of Vilnius. He was a member of the Vilnius branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society. When the possibility of establishing Polish societies arose in 1905, he was one of the founding members of the Association of Technicians in Vilnius, established on 26 April 1905. In 1912, Michniewicz left the city service and, together with Aleksander Parczewski, founded the design and construction bureau "Architekt". At the outbreak of

the Great War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting took place mainly in Europe and th ...

, he was drafted into the

Imperial Russian army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

to serve in road construction. He survived the war in Russia. After returning to Lithuania, he bought back the family house in from relatives, where he settled, dividing his time between it and his work in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...

. Until 1925, he worked for the Kaunas City Road and Highway Administration. At that time he wrote a textbook on road repair and construction ("Vieškeliai ir pasraštijie keliai, mai tymas ir laikams"). For political reasons, he was not given the position of architect of the city of Kaunas.

Projects

In Vilnius, he designed at least 30 buildings, and nearly 30 churches built by him have been established in Lithuania and Belarus. Michniewicz is also the author of designs for several private houses, villas, chapels and tombstones. Among his best-known designs in Vilnius are the Market Halls, built between 1904 and 1906, and the Pohulanka Theatre, designed along with Aleksander Parczewski, which was built between 1912 and 1914 on the initiative of and funded by Polish residents of Vilnius. The theatre is now called the Old Theatre, situated in

Vilnius Old Town The Old Town of Vilnius (), one of the largest surviving medieval old towns in Northern Europe, as inscribed within UNESCO World Heritage Sites, has an area of 3.59 square kilometres (887 acres). It encompasses 74 quarters, with 70 streets and ...

, which is a

UNESCO world heritage site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

. It has had various names since inception: In Kaunas, his best-known project is the Tatar mosque.

Later life and death

Michniewicz retired in 1936. He escaped occupation to Soviet Russia during World War II, but after the war his daughter Irena with her family and his wife Karolina were deported to Krasnoyarsk. His son emigrated to Poland. He died on 14 January 1947 in Žeimiai, Lithuania, and was buried in the churchyard of a church he himself had designed there.

Personal life

He married Karolina Feige, a German teacher from

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, and they had two children, Kazimierz and Irena.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Michniewicz, Wacław 1866 births 1947 deaths 19th-century Polish architects 20th-century Polish architects People from Žeimiai