Polish Heritage Houses: Villa Jókawa

Podkowa Leśna: A town with forest character and numerous villas

Already with the foundation of today's Podkowa Leśna municipality by industrialist Stanisław Lilpop in 1925, the predominantly forested area was conceived as a residential and recreational resort for the higher society. Important personalities and wealthy citizens of the time, similar to the neighboring town of Milanówek, had numerous villas and summer houses built on idyllic plots of land, which give the town a high cultural character to this day. It is one of the most sought-after and expensive residential areas in the Warsaw suburbs.

One of the first summer houses built after the city was founded was the villa at 19 Parkowa Street, built in 1928 by architect Zbigniew Rzepecki. It is one of four villas for which larch wood was predominantly used as a building material. Until the Second World War, the house was run as an upscale boarding house. After 1945 Podkowa Leśna became a place of refuge for citizens of destroyed Warsaw. As a result of the increasing population, a school operation was started in the villa, which was discontinued in 1948 due to the increasing return of residents to Warsaw. After that, until 2010, the villa was a tenement building, which housed several apartments.

Wild mix: eclecticism, zakopane and manor house style

Unmistakable is the Zakopane style, a regional wooden architecture that appeared in southern Poland at the end of the 19th century and was influenced by Art Nouveau.

The one-story building with a two-story middle section and high pent roof is richly decorated: Paneling on windows and doors, carved ornaments and tiles with Art Nouveau motifs. An exceptional example of a summer house of the 1920s with features of eclecticism, zakopane and manor house style is mentioned in the evaluation of the monument authority. The Jókawa villa has a living area of about 300 m², the plot measures about 1,800 m². Only in December 2018, the villa was included in the list of cultural monuments, it has an indisputable historical and artistic value was said in the wording of the responsible keeper of monuments of the Mazovian Voivodeship.