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Secessionist Ensemle of Bohomoltsia Street

The Owners, Lodgers and Other Renters of the Buildings

Olga Zarechnyuk
According to Ivan Levynskyi's (Jan Lewiński’s) project, the street was divided into 13 parts. Klementyna Witosławska, who owned the plot, sold them for the construction of new buildings. Helena Bal, the owner of the old house on Pańska street 3, bought a little piece of the territory to build a bigger residential house there. Other owners  of the previous property moved elsewhere.

Helena Bal, née Maniewska,  was a single property owner on Asnyka street representing the aristocracy. It is likely that she was the wife of a count or a baron. The remaining plots located on the street were purchased by middle class representatives, mostly entrepreneurs and doctors; however, there were also some lawyers, military, and even a hairdresser among them. The largest amount of property located on the street was bought by the Elster and Topf company, whose business was focused on building and profiting from the lease of residential townhouses. The company built a factory for the production of cigarette papers on Asnyka street. The factory building was designed in conjunction with houses 9 and 11 and was invisible from the street; some administrative premises were located in house 9.  The Elster family also lived there.

According to address books from the 1910s-1930s, the houses were mostly inhabited by people of the same professions as their owners. Doctors, lawyers, architects, photographers both lived and engaged in their professional activities there, arranging  their reception rooms, offices, and studios. A significant percentage of the street’s population were also school and university teachers, engineers, employees of public and private institutions, bankers.

There were some famous people among the residents of Asnyka street, in particular, Adolf Beck, a professor of medicine, a neurologist and a rector of the Lviv University (house 1, later house 4); Yevhen Olesnytskyi, a well-known Ukrainian politician (house 7); Stanisław Progulski, a Polish physician and a professor of the Lviv University (house 1), who was executed together with his son Andrzej by the Gestapo on the Vuletski hills in Lviv in 1941.
In 1908-1939, like today, apartments were often rented not only for housing. Apart from the shops located there, some private schools held classes in houses 7 and 11 for some time. The Honorary Consulate of Great Britain functioned in house 1, etc.

After the Second World War the population of Asnyka street as well as that of the whole city or country, changed significantly. At first the street kept its old name, but later it was renamed Akademika Bohomoltsia. Mostly military and their families who moved to the city from other parts of Ukraine or the USSR settled on this street after the war. Only a few representatives of the previous population remained and could tell about the pre-war life in the city. Today the street’s population is very diverse. In addition to apartments, various institutions and organizations are located in the houses, including the Center for Urban History, the Municipal Development and Renewal of the Old City of Lviv (GIZ Lviv), and other offices in house 6. The Lviv city prosecutor’s office is located in house 9. The honorary consulates of Canada and Mexico are located in houses 2 and 15 respectively; the Maltese Aid occupies some premises in house 8, and so on.