History of the tenement house at Gołębia 5 Street
The beginnings of the tenement house at Gołębia 5 date back to the end of the 13th century. It is confirmed by stone threads discovered during recent restoration works. These works revealed a number of changes that took place in the building over the centuries. In the renovated basements you can see fragments of walls and beams from the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the fifteenth-century portal, vault and shutters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, eighteenth-century stone pillars and arcades.
The tenement house at 5 Gołębia Street is known in Cracow as the Mohrs’ tenement house. It was acquired after a fire in 1850 by Michał Edward Mohr, a respected city physician, participant in the Spring of Nations and member of the National Guard. It is to him that the building owes its present appearance. Michał Mohr thoroughly rebuilt the building, in which he lived with his family in 1861, and in 1863 he provided an apartment for wounded insurgents of the January Uprising. After his wife’s death, the house was managed by his daughter, Aleksandra Kietlińska, the author of Memoirs, in which she described the social and community life of Cracow.
In 1867 the Mohr family decided to rent part of the rooms in the tenement house. Count Stanislaw Tarnowski, a renowned literary historian and professor at the Jagiellonian University, moved into one of the apartments. After he moved out, his brother Jan moved in with his family.
Apart from the Tarnowskis, the tenement house at Gołębia 5 was also inhabited by another noble family – the Stojowskis. The first tenants were Maria Stojowska, née Bogdańska, and her husband Alfred. They were friends with the composer Władysław Żeleński and the outstanding pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who often stayed with them. Moreover, they taught their son Zygmunt, who in later years gained great fame in the USA as a pianist and composer. After the Tarnowski family moved out in 1887, Władysław Żeleński moved to 5 Gołębia St. Maria Stojowska bought the house and arranged a music salon in it, where famous and respected musicians interpreted her son’s works. It was frequented by international celebrities such as: Anton Rubenstein, Josef Hofmann, Maurycy Rosenthal and Hans von Bülow.
In 1880, Kalikst Horoch, a November insurgent, knight of the Virtuti Militari Gold Cross, founder of the Society for the Care of Veterans from 1831, moved into the tenement house. The Society was established in 1881 and had its seat at 5 Gołębia Street until 1906. Kalikst Horoch is known as the founder of the granite slab in the Market Square in Krakow commemorating the place of Tadeusz Kościuszko’s oath. He lived in this tenement house until his death on 30 October 1883.
In later years Jerzy Mycielski, an art historian, Jagiellonian University professor and patron of the National Museum in Krakow, also lived in this tenement house. Mycielski was friends with outstanding painters, among others with Jacek Malczewski.