Vul. Lychakivska, 003 – residential building

The house no. 3 is located in what was once the Halytske (Halickie) suburb, on one of the oldest arteries of the city — the Hlyniańska road. From 1573 it was called the Lychakivska (Łyczakowska) road and from the late 18th century the Nyzhnia (Lower) Lychakivska road. The parcel, where the building number 3 stands, is quite large and is marked with no. 77 on the oldest known maps of Lviv, those of Desfilles (1766) and Huber (1777). Its perimeter housing with a large courtyard was adjacent to the wall of Lviv’s eastern defense line (the Berens line, constructed in the late 17th c.), where the building parcel number 5 was arranged later.

The parcel of the house number 3 was built up in the mid-18th c. with the use of the stones of the High Castle’s demolished walls. In 1794 it was purchased by Joseph, Karol, and Peter Piller, sons of Anton Piller, an Austrian printer, who was sent by the Austrian government from Vienna to Lviv in 1772 to organize a government printing press there. Developing their own company, the Pillers purchased parts of the two adjacent parcels number 76 and 75, adding them to the parcel number 77; consequently, the area was made rather large and irregularly shaped. On the part, attached to the north wing, they constructed a two-storied building with printing rooms on the ground floor and moved their print shop from Stavropihiyska street 11 there; it was there that the first newspaper in the Ukrainian lands was published under the title of the Gazette de Leopol, first in French and later in Polish and German.

The Piller family monopolized the whole Lviv’s publishing industry. After the university was opened in 1784 they published textbooks. The Pillers had their own paper mill, first near the village of Szkło and later in Lviv, at the Pełczyński pond (now vul. Vitovskoho). Actually, it was in the north wing on the plot number 5 that the Pillers opened the first lithographic company in Galicia in 1822, where a lot of prints with views of Galicia were published. The lithographic company functioned until 1939 under the name of Piller-Neumann i Spółka; it was co-owned by the last owner of the parcel, Józef Neumann, who served as the President of Lviv in 1911-1914 and 1919-1927.

From 1871 the parcel was owned by Feliks Głogowski. In 1892 his son Henryk Głogowski had the main house’s shingle roofs replaced with fire-resistant ones, as required by the magistrate, and had toilets constructed; both projects for these works were produced by a builder Beck. In 1893 Kamila Motylewska, a new owner, the wife of Zygmunt Motylewski, a railway engineer, who lived on ul. Garncarska, 14 (now vul. Drahomanova), carried out a reconstruction of the main house and wings, having them covered with tiles; also, toilets were reconstructed and connected to the city sewerage system and a cart shed in the courtyard was adapted for residential use. Projects for these works were designed by architect Jan Tomasz Kudelski of the Ivan Levynskyi (Jan Lewiński) Bureau; the construction works were carried out by the Jan Lewiński company too. In 1895 the ground floor premises were adapted for a shop with a storage room located in the gate (architect Edward Mustafowicz of the Jan Lewiński Bureau, carpenter Hillel Bach).

In 1903, a pharmacy "Under Roman Emperor Tytus" that had been previously located in one of the neighboring buildings, on vul. Vynnychenka, 10, was moved here. It was in ownership of Antoni Ehrbar at the time.

In 1902 the parcel became the property of Józef Neumann, who had a two-storied print shop building with a machinery hall and a store rooms built in the middle of the parcel (builder Stanisław Kwiatkowski). After the Orthodox Church was established in 1946, the print shop was used by the Synod; however, in 1950 it was transferred to the production and training base of the Polygraphic Institute (now Academy of Printing), moved from Kharkiv to Lviv in 1946. During thorough repairs of the main house held in the 1980s, the wooden staircase was destroyed and a concrete one was arranged instead; it was then that the ribbon balconies on the townhouse’s rear façade were replaced.

According to the Lviv Region Executive Committee’s resolution number 44 dated 28 January 1986, the building was entered on the List of monuments of local significance under protection no. 617.