Vul. Akademika Hnatiuka, 20-22 – residential and office building

The present house on Hnatiuka street 20-22 was built in 1911 in the place of previous two houses, which occupied a large parcel under conscription number 625 2/4 on what was then called Jagiełłońska street. The street emerged in the 16^th c. in the place of a road leading from the city walls westward, to the farmstead of Stanzl Scholz, a wealthy citizen; correspondingly, the farmstead was called Stanclowa Wola. After in 1602 the farmstead was bought by the Jesuit Fathers, who laid a large garden on their grounds (the Jesuit Garden, now the Ivana Franka park), the road leading to it was called Jezuicka and, after the order was abolished in 1773, Pojezuicka. Later it was renamed several times: in 1871 as Jagiełłońska, in honor of the Polish king Władysław Jagiełło (1386-1434); during the Soviet occupation (1939-1941) as Chernyshevskogo, in honor of this Russian revolutionary; during the German occupation (1941-1944) as Polizeistrasse, because it led to the police headquarters; in the Soviet period (1944-1991) as Gorkogo, in honor of this Russian writer. In 1991 the street was named after Volodymyr Hnatiuk (1871-1926), a famous Ukrainian folklorist and ethnographer, a longtime secretary of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, an academician of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

In 1910 Jakób and Klara Grüner purchased a large plot which was built up on the perimeter, with a courtyard, and consisted of two main buildings number 20 and 22 and wings where utility premises were located. The main buildings were connected by a common gate-passage. From 1874 the parcel belonged to the Jews: at first it was owned by Solomon Haber and from 1884 by Ozyasz Losch; they both ran shops located in the ground floor premises. After the death of Ozyasz in 1907 his sons Isaak and Jakób sold the building to the Grüner family who planned to build a new house there. Permission to build a new townhouse granted on 1 June 1910, the owners commissioned the construction bureau of Michał Ulam to design a project. It was at this bureau that such iconic Lviv architects as Ferdynand Kassler and Roman Feliński worked, and it was Kassler who designed the project of the Grüners’ townhouse in 1911. The project of the residential building was approved on 30 November 1910. As the staircase location was changed in the course of the construction and some minor changes were made in the placement of toilets, the project had to be corrected. An additional project was approved on 23 December 1910. The construction of the townhouse was completed by architect Roman Feliński, who became Ulam’s son-in-law. During the construction, which continued throughout 1911, changes were made both in the layout and in the façade decoration. The author of the townhouse’s expressive carving is Zygmunt Kurczyński, a renowned Lviv sculptor.

On 3 November 1911 the Grüners received permission to move into the four-storied townhouse with four-storied wings. The building consisted of residential, commercial, and other public premises. The basement was occupied by 11 warehouses, 12 cellars, 2 corridors; on the ground floor, there were three shops, a warehouse, two gates-passages, a cinema, consisting of two halls, a covered courtyard, front shops, the caretaker’s apartment with a room and a vestibule. The ground floor’s front part was occupied by a hall, 11 bathrooms with toilets and 2 corridors; floors 2-4 were occupied by 20 rooms, 4 entrance halls, 4 kitchens, 4 bathrooms and 4 pantries. Behind the building, a small garden was laid out with geometrically shaped flowerbeds.

At the end of 1911 Maurycy Meiblum, the owner of the famous Lviv theatrical company “Kraina cudów” (Wonderland), founded the last of his cinemas in Lviv entitled "Wonderland" in the newly built house of the Grüners. As early as December 19 he received approval to install a luminous advertising sign reading “Kino-Teatr Wonderland”. In 1912 the cinema’s name changed to “Kino Jagiełłońskie”. After the outbreak of the First World War power outages became regular; Maurycy Meiblum left Lviv, and almost all of cinemas which he founded were closed.  A senior manager of the cinema “Kino Jagiełłońskie” kept it open till  April of 1915. In November of 1916 Alexander Wolski, the president of the Association of Polish Journalists, was licensed to operate the cinema.

In 1929 an electric lift was constructed in the building under a project designed by constructor Solomon Keil. In the same year, a single-storied warehouse was built in the townhouse’s courtyard (to the right) under a project designed by architect Jakób Silber.

In the Soviet period the townhouse’s ground floor premises, where the cinema was located earlier, were occupied by the City railway ticket offices for advance sale.

The monumental building on Hnatiuka street 20-22 is an illustrative example of a modern Lviv residential townhouse.