JADWIGA ROGUSKA

The gate passage in the frontage house of a Warsaw tenement house in the second half of the 19th century connected the street with the courtyard. The main stairs in the frontage house were accessible from the passage. Apart from a communication function, the passage also played the role of reception of the entrance zone, frequently of a representative character. The gate passage usually matched the tone of style of the facade, corresponded with the changing style trends, renown of the street, wealth of the owner and tenants.

The aesthetical expression of gate passages was significantly influenced by fireproofing – following regulations – roofing, wall divisions, their decoration and equipment such as portals, sculptures, wells/springs, floors, lists of tenants, gateway doors, door stops etc.

Gate passages in the second half of the 19^th century, in the period of historicism, were covered with brick roofing referring to forms of historic vaults. Those most frequently applied in the mid century included barrel vaults with lunettes (phasing out), and the becoming more popular pendentive like vault on arches. The latter gave the possibility of decorative modifications. A popular modification of a pendentive vaults in the last decades of the 19^th century was a form suggesting a pendentive dome. Neo-gothic tenement houses used cross vaults, rib, stellar and cell vaults. Sprung-arch roofs were also very popular from the 1870s/1880s. Based on iron beams, after filling curves with plaster, they formed flat roofing, continuous or divided by beams into fields dependent upon the building technique. At the beginning of the 19^th century, apart from modern vaulting, brick and steel Klein roofing and reinforced concrete ceilings were introduced. Divisions in the roofing zone corresponded with the wall articulation.

Regardless of the stylistic preferences of roofing and wall decoration, the objective trend of increasing abundance of passage decorations and their chiaroscuro „sculptural” work emerged, and then culminated in the last decade of the 19th century. Art Nouveau, at the beginning of the 20th century, refers to the introduction of new decorative plant and animal motives, and from around 1910 of geometric ones. This period was characterised by flattening articulation and wall decoration, linearism of divisions and decorative art, first curvy, and then around 1910 – of angular shape. The return to historic decorative motives – classicistic and baroque – in a modernistic interpretation was noted before 1914. The beginning of the 20th century saw a departure from rich imitations materials towards more refined materials.

This study of gate passages, aesthetical trends, roofing types, construction solutions over time can be useful for conducted conservation renovations of tenement houses.