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We will begin the journey through the streets of Kaunas at the foot of the Vytautas hill. Extensive stretch of land extending out of Naujamiestis in the 19th century. It was divided into large parcels, which housed farm estates with gardens and orchards. XX a. Broken and divided, these properties gradually became an area of ”villas”, a picturesque, not very prestigious, but with the mandatory tile roofs of a small neighborhood of modernist houses, which has retained its peculiar charm to this day.
Walking through the inter-war streets from house to house, we will remember the fate of the people who lived here and honor the creators of these houses. Arnas Funkas, Jokūbas Peras, Eduardas Peyer, Antanas Jokimas, Vsevolodas Kopylovas, Aleksandras Gordevičius, Stasys Kudokas, Klaudijus Dušauskas-Duž, Dovydas Leiba Zimanas, Romanas Steikūnas, Adolfas Netyksa, Kazimieras Sienkevi.
From Mars to the apartments
An integral part of this district was the production area. As early as 1869. An agricultural implement factory with the Roman name “Mars” was established in 1920 (there was another metal factory with a similar name – “Minerva”) nearby (at the site of the current bus station). became AB “Nemunas”. The company was affiliated with Marty Ychu, financed by its Bank for Commerce and Industry.
Some of the company’s founders (Andrius Vosylius, Mykolas Gustaitis) bought large plots of land with wooden houses. The company produced equipment for mills, sawmills, oil mills, spinning mills, hot wool machines, motors, various cast iron and copper parts, central heating, plumbing and sewerage. The factory’s territory occupied the entire area between Vytautas Avenue, Totorių Street (then also called Ūkio Street) and Krėvos Street (which did not exist at the time). A long covered roof continued along Vitautas Avenue, which looked like a tall fence with two entrance gates. In 1930, when the Nemunas plot was divided, the construction of the Pagirskis House (now the Museum of the History of Lithuanian Education) began on Vytautas Avenue; Moiseys Ožinskis’ garage appeared alongside him and the rest of the avenue in 1933. He went to the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Casimir, who planned to build a gym here.
After the First World War, the street was called Ūkio. He continued to the foot of the hill, where he turned to the old Podgornaya (Pakalnės), which became Alytus Street. 1931 both streets merged into one, at the bottom, widened, Totorių street.
In the 1930s, there was talk of a new “planned” street: Krėvos Street. New residential houses were growing rapidly along it and also on the newly built Trakų Street. All settlers on these streets were inundated with complaints about factory smoke, pollutants and odors, and demands to move or close the factory. Despite the complaints, and often even without permission, the company continued to build new warehouses, outbuildings and production facilities, many of which were designed by engineer Aleksandras Gordevičius.
1934 The Nemunas was finally raised, but the Neris appeared in its place: in fact, the two “rivers” merged into one company, so the complaints of “excruciating stench” did not stop.
One of these complaints was filed in 1936. Filed with the police prof. Stasys Šalkauskis and Dr. Benjamin Zacharin, who lived in front of the factory on the other side of Vytautas Avenue. He claims that the AB Neries machine factory is “expanding gases harmful to human health”, that “the factory maintains dogs that breed larvae at night” and asks “to eliminate the abnormality corresponding to those abnormalities” (uncorrected language). However, the company operated until occupations until it finally became the State Metal Processing Factory.
Today, the new “Park House” apartment block (probably Peace Park – the name of the former Soviet-era Kaunas cemetery) has emerged in the former factory territory. UAB “City Projects” (architects Gražvydas Sabaliauskas, Agnė Ražinskienė and Sigita Kėblienė) in 2016. The designed houses are piled next to each other and threateningly exceed the height of the area surrounding the “villas”, and the advice not to use typical repetitive elements seems not to have been heard by its authors.
Tatar Community Center
At the former German gymnasium (now Alexander Pushkin), turn from Vytautas Avenue to Totorių Street. This street dates from the 19th century. Then it was called the cemetery crossroads because it was walking next to the new city cemetery. When the cemetery was divided between three Christian denominations, one of them, Evangelical Lutherans, a small area of less than one hectare for Muslims was also reduced.
The founder of the Kaunas mosque is considered to be Aleksandras Iljasevičius (1848–1925), the owner of the Tadarava mansion near Kruonis, a residential house and bakery in Kaunas, famous for its charity. At the beginning of the 19th century (1910), Tatar cemeteries and wooden buildings were built here: a small mosque in the depths of the plot and two community houses on the street.
After the First World War, the street was called Ūkio. He continued to the foot of the hill, where he turned to the old Podgornaya (Pakalnės), which became Alytus Street. 1931 both streets merged into one, at the bottom, widened, Totorių street. The new name appeared at the request of the Kaunas Tartar Society and was related to the construction of a new mosque.
Totorių st. 6 6
It was decided to build a new brick mosque (in fact, it was built with hollow concrete bricks, which at that time were cheaper than ordinary clay bricks) in the 1930s, the year of Vitautas the Great, in honor of the Great Duke of Lithuania, who had given privilege to the Tartars; The Petras Rimša Vytautas the Great medal was even inscribed in the minority, which did not survive. Half of the construction costs were financed by the state. Ant 1930 April 30 The engineer Vaclovas Michnevičius and the architect Adolfas Netyksa, named father of the Lithuanian churches, signed the project for the mosque. The beautiful mosque, designed for a special occasion, was opened in 1933. July 15, the day of the Battle of Grunwald. The demolition of the wooden community houses was ordered as early as 1936, but at least one of them survived until the Nazi occupation.
The mosque’s miniature building, as if it came from oriental fairy tales, with carved ornaments in the attic, pointed stained-glass windows, and a three-leaf entrance to the porch portal is topped by a tall dome, complemented by four corner domes and an elegant minority. The latter was never used for its intended purpose. Inside, the walls were decorated with ornamental paintings, the women’s balcony was fenced with an openwork wooden fence, and the dome vault represented a blue sky adorned with gold stars.
The closed and expropriated mosque of the Soviet government (once in 1941 and once in 1947) gradually lost its interior decoration. For more than 40 years, attempts have been made to adapt the house of prayer to the diverse needs of society. Here was the archive warehouse, the Valentin Dikul circus (an interesting use of a sacred building with a cupola), in 1959. – cafe reading room 1970-1973 the building was renovated according to the project of the architect Zenonas Dargis, adapting it to the “Rytas” children’s library; then a reinforced concrete gallery appeared on the south side, which no longer exists today, and a fountain on the east side.
Finally, since 1986. The building belonged to the Museum of Art M.K. Čiurlionis as a deposit of funds, hoping to one day establish a Museum of Oriental Art. After the restoration of independence, the entire state was returned to the Kaunas Muslim (Sunni) religious community. To date, the only brick mosque in the Baltic States in 2018. recognized as a cultural asset and restored. The abandoned fountain became a place for children to play with a colorful trampoline at the expense of the Muslim religious community and the city municipality.
Milwaukee and Weiss House
Across the street we stop at a beautiful modernist design house (Totorių str. 11). Its author is the engineer Arno Funkas. The silhouette of the house with the elevated tower of the staircase is accentuated by the cornices. A rounded staircase leads to the entrances. A long, rounded balcony, as if crashing into a supporting column, wraps around the corner.
Totorių st. eleven
Two-story, eight-room country house in 1936. Built by internal medicine physician Albertas Milvidas, who purchased the parcel from the nearby director of the State Lottery, Isidore Weiss. Milvid graduated from Odessa with medical studies, and his wife Stanislava studied dentistry in Dorpat (Tartu). When they returned to Lithuania, they settled in Šeduva, where they had two children. The family moved to Kaunas in 1931, after the death of their daughter Dalytė. 1941 In 1945, the family of honest doctors was deported: the father went to the camp, the mother with the son Kazis in 1945. He escaped from exile and returned to Kaunas. Kazys Milvidas graduated in civil engineering, had a son Arvydas and a daughter Dalia, worked at the Institute of Agricultural Construction Design. He died in Kaunas in 1980.
Milwaukee’s neighbors were Veisai. I. Veisas purchased the parcel at the corner of Totorių and Trakų streets (Trakų str. 20 / Totorių str. 13) in 1930. In the state lottery, he worked with his wife’s brother, Jurgis Stromas, who had also purchased a nearby land but did not build a house. And here is I. Veisas’ house, built in 1933. According to the project of engineer Jacob Per, a controversial fate was expected.
In preparation for the construction of the house and requesting permission to enclose his plot in 1932. I. Veisas criticized the authorities for planning Totorių street: “On this occasion, I consider it necessary to declare to Tamsta that, in my opinion, They make unforgivable mistakes in managing Totorių street. This street is now almost the only one with all connections to Trak calle street. Until the German Gymnasium built (extended) its palace to Totorių street last year, it was possible to expand this street from the side of the cemetery at any time by giving the Germans a gym.permission for the gym to extend the gym building to Totorių street, the city municipality at the same time not only prevented the modernization of this street , but he arranged it so that, from Vytautas avenue, this street looks like a real medieval street “. (Language not corrected)
I. Weiss’s New House, 1936 awarded “the most beautiful residential house”, certainly does not recall medieval construction. The apparently small two-story building with a basement housed three apartments with two garages and one apartment for a guard. The main façade with a wide and slightly protruding central part faces Trakų Street. J.Pero’s favorite functionalist style is manifested in strict silhouette lines, corner windows, and especially on the large balcony-terrace on the side of the patio, which covers the second floor at an acute angle. An authentic door with a round frame covered with clinker has survived under the wide roof. An authentic metal fence with a gate has also survived.
The daughter of I. Veisas and Sonia Štromaitė-Veisienė – therapist prof. Irena Veisaitė. She recalls: “It was not a very big but cozy house. On the first floor there was an apartment for a caretaker, but it was inhabited by my father’s cousin (which means a cellar – aut. Past). On the second floor – two rented apartments (ie the first floor – aut. We were located on the third floor of the house (I mean, the second floor – aut. Past). I had my own room with a separate sink, next door was the painted office of My father’s blue where I enjoyed reading books from the library in our house.) In front of my room was my parents’ room, and next to it, a very modern bathroom and toilet. Our apartment, of course, also had a dining room , a kitchen and, next to them, a room for dishes. In the dining room you could go out to a large balcony, which worked and function of the terrace. During the summer, it was possible to eat, read books, sunbathe in speaking of our house, I only see all the rooms and the things in them. “
Totorių st. 13
But the happy family life did not last long. 1938 The parents divorced and Sonia and her daughter moved into a rented apartment on Vitautas Avenue, and later, during the first occupation, they were forced to live in a nearby communal apartment on Krėvos Street. I. Veisas married a second time and went west. 1939 Bertrand de la Sabliere, first secretary of the French embassy, rented an apartment in this house.
Already during the first occupation, Antanas Sniečkus occupied the department of I. Veisas. She had probably looked down on him before, as the owners of the left house did not refuse to protect the young man “persecuted” by the Antanas Smetona regime. And now this “poor intercessor” has been installed in the elegant apartment of his benefactors. The mother who came to visit him is said to have only reproached him: “You did not want to be a gentleman, Antanėli, but you still became him,” and he returned to Šakiai forever.
During the Nazi occupation, other “knights” – Gestapo officers – settled in the house. Or 1944 A. Snechkus returned from Moscow after a bite from the Red Army. Of all the Stroma and Veisai families left in Lithuania, only three children, Irena Veisaitė and Aliukas (Aleksandras) and Margarita Štromai, survived the Holocaust. When Aliukas, who was hidden in the house of Antanas and Marija Macenavičius of Vilijampolė and thus saved, wandered through the burned Kaunas ghetto, he met A.Sniečkas. Knowing George Strom, who had been assassinated in the early days of the Nazi occupation, he decided to take the remaining orphan son and took him to the same house that his uncle and aunt knew of the boy.
After Lithuania regained its independence, the apartments at Veisai House were privatized and the heirs failed even to assert their rights. I. Veisaitė did not want to fight for his father’s house in court and accepted “symbolic compensation” for it.
Climbing the mountain
On the other corner of Trakų and Totorių streets there is a house with interesting modernist architecture (Trakų str. 19 / Totorių str. 15). A new attic hat placed in a three-story house greatly ruined the look of the house. Today, more and more of these hats sprout over Kaunas’ historic houses, their construction is not hampered by any heritage protection requirements, even if the house is inscribed on the Cultural Heritage Register or has a Heritage Label European. Not to mention an unassuming house designed by an unknown architect.
Trakų st. 19 / Totorių st. fifteen
House on the corner of Alytus and Ūkio streets, near the projected Trakų Alfredos Jankauskienė and dr. By order of Pranas Jucaitis in 1929. Vsevolod Kopylov, then a construction technician, a graduate of the Technical School, and then a modernist architect educated in Prague, began to design, whose buildings in Kaunas and Telšiai are amazing in variety and courage. Here and there, another terrace-balcony is placed on top of the open entrance terrace in thin ribbed columns, on which another balcony is hung on the third floor, all surrounded by metal fences and adorning the rising side façade. to Totorių street.
The ground floor terrace was extended by a fence with a door behind the steps. 1931 The owner A.Jankauskienė explains the improvement of the project in the following way: “This terrace is necessary to mask the sudden and high elevation of Alytus street. It will be planted with vegetation and flowers from above and will contribute to the decoration of Alytus street “
Not only was the house itself very tall at the time. The impression of height was reinforced by the fact that he rose before his eyes climbing the mountain.
Alytaus Street (formerly Pakalnės) started behind this rounded turn and rose along the hill, parallel to Trakų Street, which in 1929. It was still being designed. And the old Ūkio street (now Totorių) ended here, at the foot of the hill. Its ascent is closed by a five-story modernist house with an attic (Totorių str. 10), designed by the architect of the Riga polytechnic, the architect Romano Steikūnas.
Not only was the house itself very tall at the time. The impression of height was reinforced by the fact that it rose before the eyes when climbing the mountain, and in the form of a narrow façade that closed the street itself: risalits with a cornice-topped edge, gently rounded towards the center, where, from the third floor, also elegant long balconies. Incidentally, until recently the house was uncoated.
In this house from 1933 to 1939. The premises were rented by the Palace of Physical Education, which was initially run by Antanas Jurgelionis, a doctor in the family of President Antanas Smetona. – Lithuanian professor, nationalist Vytautas Augustauskas.
Relatives of the former owners made an inscription on the side of the house, announcing that this house was built in 1933. Ona and Jonas Liutka built and lived with their daughter Gražina. Only the architect’s surname is missing, and that inscription would be the envy of many houses in Kaunas that have been forgotten today.
Let’s go to the old Alytaus street, which at that time became a continuation of Totorių street. The old plot belonged to Jurgis Vaicekauskas during the interwar period. The wooden house that survives on a high plinth with a stained glass porch dates from before the First World War. Only a few wooden houses in this area have miraculously survived to this day: obsolete and found in a masonry neighborhood where not only the construction but also the repair of wooden houses was banned, they were ruthlessly demolished in the interwar period and the rest by new owners.
Minister and “pornographic figure”
Before the eyes is the so-called Minister’s House (Totorių str. 14), named after real estate developers, after its reconstruction and the sale of newly furnished luxury apartments. This exceptional house was built by the Minister.
Totorių st. 14
Prime Minister and Minister of Justice, professor, lawyer, Christian Democrat Antanas Tumėnas and his wife Janina Kairiūkštyte-Tumėnienė acquired land on the slopes of Vytautas Hill in 1924 from Jurgis Vaicekauskas. The neighborhood was just beginning to take shape and this house was the first new house built here. This alone, and the position of the owner, made it exceptional. A certain 1925 A.Tumėnas resigned from the government, so he was no longer a minister, but his 1926. He did not doubt the uniqueness of the house built.
The history of the house’s design is still unclear. When Tumėnai bought the plot, J. Vaaicekauskas had already started building a house on it according to the project of the engineer Aleksandras Gordevičius. However, the new owners, for some reason, did not like the project and commissioned a new project for engineer Edmund Alfons Fryk. The request submitted to the J.Tumėnien Departamento Building Department “demonstrates that events unfolded in this manner and not the other way around” to allow the construction of the masonry house to continue in accordance with the plan prepared by Mr. Fryk, replacing Thus the permission granted to Mr. Vaicekauskas to build the house.
Permission was granted to “repeal the previous plan and allow construction under a new plan.” However, the built house is far from reminiscent of the ornate “frykoko” project presented by J.Tumėnienė. So what happened? One can only speculate that A. Gordevičius returned to the project of this house when, instead of a two-story villa, Tumėnai was planning a three-story apartment building.
The former minister appeared as a tireless writer of complaints. Dissatisfied with the way the neighborhood was built, he sent several letters to the Municipality of Kaunas.
The former minister appeared as a tireless writer of complaints. Dissatisfied with the way the neighborhood was built, he sent several letters to the Municipality of Kaunas. He wrote about the same thing: that he had been promised that he would form a lot in front of his house, but in his place was inserted a “very long geometric figure, which, when drawn on paper, was quite similar to a pornographic drawing drawn by a criminal in public exhibition. Article 281 of the Statute “(language without modifications).
For breach of promises, A.Tumėnas even threatened to sue Mayor Jonas Vileišis, who later took refuge in his own home: Vileišiai rented an apartment in this house during difficult times for his family. And instead of the “obscene figure” in 1939. The rear facade of the house under construction on Trakų Street appeared, therefore A.Tumėnas writes again: “In 1924 I bought a farm in the place now called Totorių Street No. 12, then the whole district was on the outskirts, where neither the current streets of Trakų nor Totorių were rural.The road is called Ūkio Street.
As I was preparing to build, upon seeing the floor plan of the city Burmese house Mr. Vileišis, the city engineer Mr. Fryk expressed his satisfaction with my courage with which I first entered the messy area of the city, together They explained to me and verified how the area was planned; in front of my house now standing, they designed the site.
When I had already built the house (…), I unexpectedly saw a different design, and instead of the designed site, he brought me a pornographic figure throughout my farm, like the ones in the drawings.
I would be forced by too subjective a description of the figure, who is still a dilettante, a non-urban engineer, without a special aesthetic feeling, it will be said that the derived figure is not justified by local transport, which contaminates the pearl of Kaunas.
Here there is a question of public aesthetics, the exercise of which is a formally exclusive right of the bodies of the city, of urban specialists, and in my opinion there would be no formal basis to express it to Mr. Burmistr. But now, by exploiting the drawn figure, there is a strict illegality, a violation of my rights, conditions are created for me, so that when I went to the village district, I felt that I went into the old town, Mapų street, in fact, there is no such image on Mapų street, “writes the former minister -” Mapų street “).
In one of the apartments in 1933-1938. was the Honorary Vice Consulate of Hungary, lived the Vice Consul economist dr. Aron Braudė. Tumėnai also disagreed with the facade (this was required as early as 1935).
At the beginning of the Nazi occupation, A.Tumėnas tried to save his colleague and lawyer friend David Volpert and his family, his pianist wife Ida Gurvičaitė-Volpertienė and their seven-year-old daughter, Rieta. For a few weeks, the Volpert family lived in the Tumėnai house, but then decided to move to the ghetto, where all their relatives were. David Volpert was killed in Dahau, Ida Volpertien in Stuthof. Volpertai’s daughter, saved by her nanny Elena Chlopinaitė, warmly recalled Tumėnai’s sincere efforts to help her family. Later, the former minister of anti-Nazi activities even got into the mouth of the Gestapo.
1944 The Tumėnai family moved to Austria with their daughter Danuta, who studied in Vienna. A.Tumėnas died in Austria in 1946. The spacious house was used as a medical institution: in Soviet times, the Railway Hospital operated here, after regaining independence, a private clinic “Sana Vita”, until 2000. The house was sold. Fourteen apartments have been installed in the recently rebuilt house.
The minister’s neighbor was Albert Ošlapas and his wife Antanina. “In the old Alytus street, but now in Totorių 18 street” in 1931–1932. According to the project of the architect Stasys Kudokas, they built a large four-story apartment building, where he lived with his sons Algimantas and Raimundas (twins, who graduated from the gym together with the future president Valdas Adamkus); There was a large garden near the house. And this family in 1944. He moved west.
An old medinukas (Totorių str. 16) was standing next to the renovated apartment building. No one noticed how it disappeared. But the last house on this street, as well as the 20th century. The medinukas (Totorių str. 20) that remember the beginning of the 19th century are still alive.
Totorių st. twenty
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