A Suburban Space

A Suburban Space

In the nineteenth century quarters located to the north of the city center were officially attached to the city as the Zhovkivske suburb. It was only natural, however, that this area long retained its suburban character, different from the actual city "within the walls." Till the end of the nineteenth century, low wooden buildings were predominant there; there were many semi-rural estates with orchards and vegetable gardens in this area. During the colonization of Lviv's outskirts in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries, separate estates and farms were founded around the city and gradually surrounded by apiaries, fields, wineries, mills. Some estates grew and turned into full-fledged villages like Zamarstyniv, Velyke Holosko, Kulparkiv.

     The northern and southern outskirts of Lviv, i.e. Halytske and Krakivske suburbs, were the most populated and built up ones. This was considerably favored by the branched channel of the Poltva and its tributaries which flowed along the north-south axis, sandwiched between big hills on the east and on the west. The system of streams played an important role in the economic life of the city as a source of energy for mills and a means to get rid of dirt and sewage. The Halytske suburb had a superiority in the number of mills due to its hilly terrain where many rapid and powerful streams flowed into the Poltva. In the Krakivske suburb the Poltva's current was quieter, but wider, thus attracting millers. It was specially for mills that as early as the "princely" times some engineering works were carried out to regulate the flow in the area of what is now ​​the intersection of prosp. Chornovola and vul. Khimichna. In the fourteenth century it was mentioned in the city documents that there was a mill called "The Village Corner" there, which, according to a legend, belonged to Prince Leo, and a mill owned by the church of the Virgin Mary and located on the border of Zamarstyniv and Zboyishcha (Mohytych, 2011). Right opposite the Krakivska gate, according to historians, one of the oldest mills in Lviv, Zymnovodsky, was situated, which had a monopoly on milling alcoholic malt (Kis, 1968, 162).

     Numerous tanneries were built near creeks and streams at the Krakivske and Halytske suburbs. Running water was also what butchers needed. The main Lviv slaughter house was located on the Poltva near the Krakivska gate (now the Rizni square).

     In the Middle Ages the residents of the suburbs were mainly involved in unpretentious and second-rate crafts. Gradually, however, the suburban craftsmanship diversified and even duplicated the city professions, with the only difference being that it existed outside official guilds.

      In the mid-eighteenth century the appearance of Lviv suburbs changed. There was a division into an elite southern area and a working northern area. The gradual concentration of power in the hands of the nobility and clergy led to the situation when a significant part of the suburban lands was turned over to noble and monastic estates, residences, gardens, and orchards. Magnates were most attracted by fine comfortable territories in the south and in the east, in the vicinities of vul. Zelena and vul. Lychakivska (Фелонюк, 2009, 16).

      Rich and influential people, who wanted to invest money in crafts or trade in Lviv, were forced to abandon cooperation with official city merchants and craftsmen's guilds, because the latter still practiced the old "feudal" rules of work. The then "investors'"attention was more and more attracted by the northern neighbourhoods outside the city walls, not prestigious for the construction of manors, but having enough free artisans, the so-called bunglers (pol. partacze), not bound with "guild" restrictions. The confrontation between the guilds members and bunglers lasted for a long time, and in the eighteenth century it was the suburban bunglers that were more attuned to the needs of modern times (Історія Львова, 1956, 50). Early modern economic and production practices took deeper roots in the Krakivske suburb also because of a long history of juridical independence from the city fitting into the format of clear and well-defined jurisdictions proper to castles, nobility, and clergy. The craftsmen, formally subordinated to the burgrave, had to belong to the guilds too, but to implement this dependence in practice was often impossible, particularly due to the informal tolerant position of the castle authorities. So the Pidzamche craftmen's workshops were completely free from the influence of the city guilds, as it was case in jurydykas belonging to the nobility or clergy. Therefore, the number of workshops and markets was growing while in other areas it was decreasing. So the well-known tanneries of the Halytske suburb vanished. The Halytskyi market decayed almost completely while the market, situated near the Krakivska gate, continued to expand.

      The gradual process of the Krakivske suburb's craft specialization in the time, when mainly luxury mansions, gardens, palaces, and parks appeared in other places around the city, may also be explained by a geographical factor. This refers to the fact that the Poltva flows from the south to the north. The use of the river as a channel helping to get rid of waste and sewage resulted in the transfer of main production facilities to the north, that is, to the place where the Poltva left the city. In this way the people of the city managed to protect themselves from dirt.

      The northern suburb was a good place for the implementation of early capitalistic practices in the field of trade. This situation was possible due to the intermediate position of the suburb between the city and the countryside, as well as due to the trade practices of local Jewish merchants and small traders, developed under the protection of the jurydykas, independent from the city, on the basis of patterns alternative to to the urban ones. The market place near the Krakivska gate expanded more and more and merged with the surrounding quarters into a huge commercial complex, divided into specialized zones, as evidenced by the relevant old names of local streets, e.g. Khlibna (Pol. Chlebna, Eng. Bread), Tsybulna (Pol. Cebulna, Eng. Onion), Husiacha (Pol. Gęsia, Eng. Goose). An important part of the market body was a junk market, which occupied the Św. Teodora (St. Theodore) square after the dismantlement of the church of St. Theodore; this was reflected in the name of the adjacent street called Stara Lakhmitnytska or Old Junkman's (ul. Starotandentna, now vul. Muliarska).

     Another important traditional aspect of the northern suburbs' life was smuggling.  It was through Pidzamche that one of the most important trade routes, the Volhyn tract, went and thanks to smart Pidzamche traders various products often were brought to the city bypassing the customs barrier at the Zhovkivska checkpoint. Apart from that, it is worthwhile to mention illegal production and sale of alcoholic beverages, which was extremely widespread in this part of Lviv and broke the monopoly of the city authorities.