ABOUT THE SVIDERMEYER STYLE

If you have visited New England or the American Midwest, you will be familiar with American Victorian houses: those wooden, decorative, fanciful, single-family homes, with rotund living rooms, gables, towers, magnificent fireplaces, and gaudy wallpaper—the epitome of the upwardly mobile middle classes of the Gilded Age. They remain charming symbols of the better past when everything was  simpler and prettier.

The American Victorian house has its equivalent in Poland: the Svidermeyer (Świdermajer) architecture of the Otvotsk[1] Line. The health benefits of the red pine forests southeast of Warsaw on the banks of the river Svider were discovered by the Warsaw middle classes in the 1890s, and the various settlements along the Otvotsk train line soon became their desired escape from the pollution of the city and—as they hoped—the bane of the nineteenth century: tuberculosis.

Soon, the Warsaw middle classes were building summer villas all along the Otvotsk line. Their architects developed a unique style of wooden architecture, informed in part by the Russian dacha, in part by the Alpine villa, and in part by the Zakopane Style of woodworking. In time these new communities became the favorite haunts of the intellectual and literary elite. And as such, they found their way into literature. One of the greatest Polish poets of the interwar period, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, gave the style a name, calling them “Svidermeyer:”

Jest willowa miejscowość, nazywa się groźnie Świder, rzeczka tej samej nazwy lśni za willami w tyle, tutaj nocą sierpniową, gdy pod gwiazdami idę, spadają niektóre gwiazdy, ale nie na te wille, spadają bez eksplozji na biedną głowę moją, a wille w stylu groźnym jak stały, tak stoją - dzień i noc; i znów nocą nikły blask je oświetla; cóż im “Concerto grosso” Fryderyka Jerzego Haendla! Te wille, jak wójt podaje, są w stylu “świdermajer”

There is a village of villas With the threatening name of Svider, (A rivulet of this name Sparkles among its orchards). Here, on an August night, I walk beneath the stars. Some come shooting down but not upon the homes, they fall without explosion upon my sorry head, and the villas in their glory stand as they’ll ever stand. A day; a night; and again a night, they bathe in the summer’s glow; what do they care for Concerto Grosso of Frederick Haendel, George? They are, says the village mayor, In the style of Svidermeyer

Despite the ravages of World War II and a period of disfavor (1945-1990) when “wooden” briefly meant “poor” and many of the houses went to seed or were “recycled,” the several hundred houses remaining in the various localities along the Otvotsk train line have now become objects of desire, lovingly restored, and visited.

A recent book, Nasz Świdermajer, by Hanna Litwin, , tells a tale of such a house. Built in the 1890s by a Russian officer stationed in Warsaw, it had six apartments, three glassed-in verandas, two glassed-in balconies, four kitchens, eight bathrooms, an armored vault, a smoking room (for smoking homemade sausages), several secret passages, and a clock tower. In the course of restoring it, the family discovered heirlooms buried in the walls during World War One, gas masks from the Polish-Russian War, and three secret apartments in which, at different times, different people hid during World War Two: Jews from the local ghetto, smugglers, partisans.

Hanna Litwin’s book is as much a biography of the family as it is a biography of the house, as if it were a living, breathing creature. The House of Women tells a similar tale: the story of the lives of three generations of women who lived in an ancient Svidermeyer house near Otvotsk, a huge, rambling house with a convoluted history, buried treasures, mysterious rooms, and secret passages—secret passages both within its walls and within the hearts of its residents. As the story unfolds, we discover that the women themselves turn out to be mysterious: none turns out to be the person she thought she was.

Your translator

Tom Pinch

Ardennes National Park

Here is a guide to the Svidermeyer villas of Otvock: https://culture.pl/en/article/a-guide-to-the-wooden-villas-of-otwock.

And if you are in Warsaw, you can take the train to Otvotsk and follow this trail for a pleasant afternoon walk: https://pl.wikiloc.com/szlaki-wycieczki-piesze/swidermajer-47567778.

Of which you can see some lovely photos here: https://www.aktywniwpodrozy.pl/swidermajer-w-otwocku/.

And here is an academic article on the style, if you are into this sort of thing: (PDF) “Świdermajer”, the Architecture of Historic Wooden Summer Villas in the Polish Landscape: A Study of Distinctive Features (researchgate.net)

[1] Otvotsk (Otwock): a satellite city to the south east of Warsaw.