Vul. Lemyka, 34 – residential building

The house is erected by an architect for the residence of his family and for the location of the office, as well as for renting apartments to tenants. Today the house is used as a residential multi-apartment building.

The house is located separately, on a complex relief, namely on the north-eastern slope of one of the hills of Sofiivka. The main façade overlooks small Lemyka street, lateral Mushaka street and Sventsytskoho street. It is surrounded by houses built in the late 19^th – early 20^th centuries in the Picturesque and Secession styles.

The building has two stories and a semi-basement on the front façade side. It features a free layout with an asymmetric arrangement of volumes that is typical of the Picturesque style. It has two staircases, which can be entered also from the street. The central four-flight staircase is located in the square volume of the tower. The lateral two-flight staircase is located on the right and has wheeling steps. Due to the relief difference, the back entrance is accessed via stairs from the street. According to the design drawings, the semi-basement is 3.75 m high, the ground floor is 4 m high, the second floor is 4.35 m high. The total building size in plan view is 24.05 x 16.20 m (ДАЛО 2/1/4303:21-22).

The house's layout. According to the design drawings, the ground floor was occupied by a laundry, the caretaker’s room and two bathroom units in the opposite wings of the house. At the central staircase, there is a common hall for two apartments. Two two-room apartments were designed on the ground floor. Their layout is not comfortable: all rooms are intercommunicating, there are many closets, niches, alcoves there. The apartments have kitchens with windows overlooking the rear façade; there are toilets, but no bathrooms there. On the other hand, from the kitchens of these apartments one can get to the cellars, since stairs are arranged here. In addition, from the apartment on the right the back stairs can be accessed, which can lead one to the level of the street or, going up to the second floor, to the outside gallery and farther to the hill behind the house. The apartment on the left has two entrances, one to the hall and the other leading immediately to a room, which could serve as an office (reception room). The entire second floor is occupied by only one five-room apartment, which, obviously, the architect designed for himself. Near the kitchen here, there is a service room (ДАЛО 2/1/4303:24). One of the rooms has an exit to the veranda, from where one can go down via several steps to a small garden on the hill. The rooms in the house’s left wing have corner balconies on the ground and second floors of the main façade. The central staircase could lead one both to the attic and to the wooden gallery.

The building's façades are designed in the Picturesque style with the use of stylized elements of Gothic, Romanesque, Neo-Baroque, and folk (Carpathian) architecture. The villa features a free arrangement of different volumes with complex roofs; it is dominated by the central tower, topped with an arched roof and crowned with spires and a massive forged fence. The tower is decorated with a metal frieze with trefoils. An additional emphasis is created by a forged gargoyle water spout, designed by Ivan Dolynsky, as well as other artistic elements of the building, at the stage of the design drawings (DALO 2/1/4303:23). Under the principle of "the truth of materials", exposed surfaces of building and facing materials were used on the building's façades: the brickwork of the top part of the walls and high chimney, wooden profiled elements of the galleries, verandas, and porches, heavy metal elements of the top part of the roofs, tiles covering roofs and window sills. Bricks, found around the house, have a mark reading "Gruderówka" on them (they were probably produced nearby, at the brickyard of Majer Gruder, then situated on Snopkowska street 28). According to the principles of uniqueness and manual production, typical of the architecture of the turn of the 20^th c., all windows in the house have different sizes and configurations. The windows are both single and mullioned, both arched, with circular, segmental or two-centered arches, and rectangular. In some windows of the staircase, pseudo stained glasses of the Neo-Renaissance stylistics have been preserved, produced by etching in the form of a symmetrical arabesque vase. The main entrance door is wooden, with metal lattices in the windows. The door to the back staircase is replaced with a modern metal one. The semi-basement level is emphasized by banded rustication and opus rusticus inserts below. The volume of the tower is accentuated by a decorative Neo-Baroque asymmetric pediment on the main façade. Metal fences of the balconies and of the bridge leading to the hill are most simple, made of metal rods and covered with a handrail; only the main façade balconies are decorated with jardinières. According to the Secession principles, the building composition is developed upwards, gradually growing from the smooth plastered walls of the lower floors to the brick walls with pictorial panels, drawn in the recessed wall sections and protected by the considerable ejection of the roof. The panels are obviously drawn according to the sketches of the villa’s architect, Ivan Dolynsky, who was also known as a painter. The panels have different sizes: two small, three medium and one largest. There is no painting on one of the panels; it may have been destroyed. The two small panels are decorated with the so-called “metal binding ornament” with fruit garlands in the style of Northern Mannerism, and the larger four panels represent putti with attributes. In particular, one portrays a putto with a quiver bending a bow (Amur); on the second one, a putto is drawing on the globe; and on the other two putti (a girl and a boy) are playing. The panels are drawn in a realistic manner, using the earth palette, in particular a warm (ochrous) color of the subject and a cold (gray) background, which is in harmony with the red brick trimming and the natural color of the wooden elements.

The house is one of the urban dominants of the former Sofiivka (pol. Sofiówka) neighborhood, providing it with a romantic historical flavor. As can be seen in old photos, due to the use of common compositional techniques (towers, brickwork, wooden elements, pictorial inserts), the house formed a harmonious urban ensemble with the buildings on Sventsitskoho street 22, 24 (architect I. Dolynsky) and 28 (architect D. Kryczkowski, 1910-1912).

Today, the condition of the house of Ivan Dolynsky is unsatisfactory. A large part of the roof being covered with galvanized corrugated tin distorts not only the look of the monument, but also the city landscape. Obviously, this was done within the program of the current repair of the housing. In addition, earlier the central tower was covered with tin sheets, most of the windows were replaced with plastic ones, the pseudo stained glasses were lost; only some parts of the façade paintings and of the authentic fence have survived. A number of carved wooden elements of the house, depicted in the archival drawing of the façade (DALO 2/1/4303:23) and seen in an old photo, are also lost. There is no balcony on the second floor, which was designed in the same style as the balcony of the tower. There is no small roof above the entrance, which was on the archival drawing. The house residents indicate an emergency condition of the villa due to a landslip.

The accessible staircase interiors are designed in the Picturesque style. The floor of the vestibule and staircases is paved with mosaic tiles having multi-colored guilloche frieze and filled with diamonds (ochrous and wine red), which were common in Lviv architecture at the turn of the 20^th c. The central staircase is wooden and has a metal fence, consisting of twisted rods and an ornament of volutes, flowers, and voluminous spirals. As indicated by some preserved mounting elements, there apparently were identical fences at the staircase windows. Hooks for fixing the carpet have been preserved on the steps. The structure of the stairs is supported by the central pillar, which is square in plan and has small and narrow Neo-Gothic columns on the corners. In line with the column sides, the staircase walls are reinforced with lesenes having identical small columns on the corners. At the entrance, there used to be a statue facing the staircase flight; only its pedestal has survived. According to a ground floor apartment resident, the lower parts of the stair flights were decorated with paintings in the "Carpathian style", with ornaments in blue, green, red colors. These paintings have survived under numerous layers of lime applied during repairs. On the ground floor, there is an authentic double door of the apartment entrance. The small windows of the door are decorated with an etched drawing with arabesques (lambrequins, vases, cartouches), in line with the etched patterns of the staircase windows (vases, royal lilies).

The back (service) staircase is wooden and has chiselled balusters. Its walls are covered with disharmonious multi-colored tiles; the bridge leading to the hill is in an emergency state.

The back façade of the house can be seen from the hill which has terraces and paths. It can be accessed from the veranda of the second floor apartment. Unfortunately, the veranda’s carved elements, marked on the design drawing (ДАЛО 2/1/4303:21), were destroyed during one of the alterations of the apartment (according to a resident). Close to this veranda, a small garden is arranged, limited by a retaining wall. In the wall, there are arched niches, one of which, obviously, contained a sculpture. From this garden, one can get to the hill through an arched portal or go down to the street level via a complex system of stairs. Near the back façade a metal wicket has been preserved, having a wire mesh and ornaments of hearts, scrolls, circles, voluminous spirals consistent with the ornament on the fence of the stairs in the interior.

Due to its separate location close to the hill and its beautiful architecture, the building casts historical and romantic associations over the city residents, resembling a medieval castle, one of Bruegel's paintings or being a kind of symbol of Ukrainian Lviv.