On the plot, before the current building, there was a tavern (German: wirtschaft), managed by Emil Manthei[2]
This made the area prone to leisure, emphasized by the presence, since the end of the 19th century, of a theatre and a restaurant on the other side of the intersection (at 66-68 Gdańska street).
The house was built in 1903–1904, designed by the architect Rudolf Kern, a student of Józef Święcicki who also erected or redesigned other buildings in Gdańska Street:[3]
Rudolf Kern originally erected the tenement for his own use, private and business. He lived there until 1922.
The building will soon accommodate a four-star hotel, including a gastronomic restaurant, with recreational and commercial areas.[4]
Features
The building has a decorative Art Nouveau facade. It has four main floors and one hidden in the upper roof. In a way its size balances the symmetry with the opposite building.[5]
It is characterized by an asymmetric arrangement of loggia and bays, typical decorative elements including leaf and tendril motifs, intertwined organic forms, mostly curvaceous in shape.[5]
^"names". Adressbuch nebst allgemeinem Geschäfts-Anzeiger von Bromberg und dessen Vororten für 1900: auf Grund amtlicher und privater Unterlagen. Bromberg: Dittmann. 1900. p. 126.
^Jastrzębska-Puzowska, Iwona (2006). Od miasteczka do metropolii. Rozwój architektoniczny i urbanistyczny Bydgoszczy w latach 1850–1920. Bydgoszcz: Mado. ISBN8389886715.
(in Polish) Bręczewska-Kulesza Daria, Derkowska-Kostkowska Bogna, Wysocka A. (2003). Ulica Gdańska. Przewodnik historyczny. Bydgoszcz: Wojewódzki Ośrodek Kultury w Bydgoszczy. ISBN9788386970100.
Panorama on Gdańska Street intersection with Mickiewicz alley, the building on the left