Warsaw Tries to Polish Up a Stalinist-Era Eyesore

An old joke asks where in Warsaw you can get the best view of the city. The answer, still true today, is the 760-foot-tall Palace of Culture and Science. Why? You don’t see that building from there.

The Palace of Culture, a “gift” to Poland from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, was built in a style that incorporates strong elements of “socialist realism,” with its heroic depictions of ordinary men and women. But it also mixes in Roman columns at the entryways and grafts it all onto the architecture of an old Manhattan skyscraper.

The combination of its history and its looks yielded an edifice that many Warsaw residents loved to hate.

After the 1989 collapse of communism here, there was much talk that this symbol of the city--and of Russian domination of Poland--should be torn down, or perhaps hidden from view by building a cluster of skyscrapers around it.

But now city leaders have decided instead to rehabilitate the image of the 3,000-room structure, which includes conference halls, theaters, libraries, museums, shops, a swimming pool with an Olympic-standard diving tower, and government, academic and corporate offices.

The city has firmly rejected “the ideas of those who wanted to destroy it,” Warsaw Mayor Pawel Piskorski said at a recent news conference discussing the building’s physical and symbolic face lift.

“It’s a building connected with a very difficult and sad period of the history of Poland and of Warsaw,” Piskorski said. “It’s a building which was built in the Stalinist period, and for many years, for generations, for the people of Warsaw it was connected to the tragedy of those times, the oppression.

“Today, we think that we have to break this bad image of the Palace of Culture.”

While Warsaw has a few other scattered skyscrapers, the Palace of Culture still soars in solitary majesty over the heart of the city. The effort now is to try to link it with positive images, such as London’s Big Ben, or provide new kinds of entertainment facilities, such as a planned $1.2-million wintertime ice-skating rink.

Not everyone is convinced that it’s possible to make the Palace of Culture attractive.

“I’ve never liked it, because of the architecture,” said Dariusz Wasiak, 37, a waiter. “But it will never be dismantled, because it would cost a lot of money.”

The best thing to do with the building, Wasiak suggested, would be to cover its exterior with glass and aluminum. “Then it would be nicer to look at,” he said.

“There are some people for whom it has connotations of a great tragedy for the Polish nation,” Wasiak added. “There are many cities in the world that have something strange in the middle. But it’s unique in Warsaw to have something in the middle that reminds them of such a time.”

The key step announced so far to boost the palace’s image is the planned transformation of the building’s high-rise portion into what is being described as the world’s tallest clock tower.

“From our information, this will be the highest-placed clock in the world,” Piskorski said.

The combined reach of the hour and minute hands will be about 17 feet, making them longer than Big Ben’s, city officials say. The clock will have dials on each side of the palace tower. Its accuracy will be assured by use of an international system of time signals beamed from satellites, officials said.

Citing technical experts, the city predicts that, on a clear day, it will be possible to read the time from three miles away.

A gift from the telecommunications firm that uses the palace tower for its antennas, the clock is to be installed this fall and unveiled in a New Year’s Eve ceremony. It will be called the Millennium Clock.

The clock won’t play any music or chimes. It’s so high up, the volume would have to be so loud to be heard at street level that it would be impossible to work in the higher floors, Piskorski said.

“We would like the Palace of Culture to be connected with good symbolism,” Piskorski stressed. “From the beginning, clocks were put on towers with the symbolism of keeping good time for the city. The symbolism will be that the highest tower in Warsaw takes care of the town.”

Another part of the rehabilitation effort is a just-completed remodeling of the building’s 30th floor--which has outdoor viewing terraces and is now graced with a coffee shop and exhibits on Warsaw’s past and present.

“The Palace of Culture will gradually become the real living center of our town,” Piskorski said optimistically. “Its symbolism as a place just connected with Communist times and Stalinism will be broken. It will be a building that serves the people of Warsaw, where people will be able to have fun and to study.”

Construction of the building--which in its early years was called the Josef Stalin Palace of Culture and Science--started in 1952 and was completed in 1955, a period that coincided with the worst of totalitarian terror in Poland as the Communist Party consolidated its control. The Soviet Union imposed communism on Poland after the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany.

Money and skilled laborers sent by Moscow were used to build the palace, so it was referred to as a “gift.” But at that point, most Poles already felt that they were paying a terrible price by being forced to live under communism. So even though it was free, “we had to pay for it later one way or another,” said Wojciech Szadkowski, who works in the building.

Despite all the negative political feelings associated with the building, which was used, among other things, for major Communist Party conferences, many middle-aged Warsaw residents grew up enjoying its sports and entertainment facilities.

“Outside, of course, it’s strange, but inside is very nice--it’s very functional, very solid,” said Krystyna Jurkiewicz, 59, a pensioner and part-time shop attendant. “When I was little, we were living in horrible conditions, so it was impressive to me.”

Jurkiewicz said tearing the building down would be foolish--no matter how much anger there is at what the Russians did to Poland.

“Josef Stalin is gone and the Palace of Culture is still standing, so it’s better to leave it standing,” she said. “We endured 50 years of slavery, and this palace was given to us. It’s some compensation. What matters isn’t the symbolism of this palace. What matters is the 50 years of slavery.”

There are also plenty of people who think that the building is just fine.

“Of course I like it,” said Anna Jankowska, 38, a resident of the small town of Pleszew in southeastern Poland who was visiting the viewing terrace. “We like it because it’s a symbol of Warsaw and even of Poland.

“Of course it’s a symbol of that bad Stalinist period, but it’s already rooted in Polish thinking. I’m a schoolteacher, and when I teach about Warsaw, the first thing the children know is that there is a Palace of Culture. I’m absolutely against dismantling it.”

The character of the building is also changing because of how it is used. Its Congress Hall, which once hosted Communist conferences, is now sometimes used for rock concerts, with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan among those who have performed there.

For many younger Poles, 11 years of democracy and free-market reforms mean that talk of Stalinist symbolism and bad feelings from the past is so foggy as to be almost meaningless. That bodes well for the Palace of Culture’s future.

“I like it very much, maybe because it’s so huge,” said Edyta Pietrzak, a student from the central city of Lodz, who was enjoying the view from the palace’s 30th-floor terrace. Asked what her image was of the 1950s, she first said, “I don’t know,” then added: “I think it was a bad time.

“Was that the war? It was communism, yes? I don’t know. I’m 14.”