Wólczańska street remains deeply embedded in the city’s history. It used to be a street lined up with factories, palatial residences, villas, and townhouses. Its origins date back to 1825, when this particular area was separated from the village of Wólka. During the city’s rapid development, the factory owners like Kindermann, Lange, Richter, Huffer and the Schweikert brothers had their proud residences put up there. During World War II, the street lost many of its original buildings. In November 1939, a synagogue located at number 6, i.e. on the plot adjacent to the 4 Wólczańska development project. The Jewish temple was commonly dubbed "The Lithuanians’ synagogue", as the Jews who had arrived in the Kingdom of Poland in the years 1891-1892 and 1905-1907 happened to originate from the Russian zone of settlement, mainly from Russia’s western governorates, presently the territories of Lithuania and northern Belarus. Currently, the site accommodates a parking lot and an adjacent private school building.
The construction of the six-storey townhouse at 4 Wólczańska street commenced in 1913, and was completed a year later. The building had a nearly rectangular footprint and consisted of a front building, two side annexes, and a closing transverse annexe.
From the side overlooking Wólczańska street, the entrance is decorated by an antique, double-winged, latticework gate, with a transom light, and a radial arrangement of muntins, and an oculus made over the entrance door to the staircase. In front of the main gate, two dwarf-shaped doorstoppers are also worthy of attention. On both sides of the building, two overhangs (bay window arrangements) with balconies, topped with the arch-shaped crests were designed. Decorative floor tiles with floral ornamentation survived the ravages of time, as did the wrought-iron, latticework balustrades boasting rich floral motifs, and geometrical patterns on the landings.
The representative frontal façade facing the Wólczańska street is characterised by the early-modernist architecture, eloquently enhanced with sophisticated ornamentation, directly evocative of the Baroque and Art Nouveau styles. The façade is set on a high plinth with stylish rustication at the ground floor level. The upper part of the façade is accentuated with vertical divisions.
In the central area of the façade, between the bay window overhangs, the window axes are separated by the three-storey pilasters, faced off with white ceramic tiles along their lengths.
The pilaster bases rest on a wide panelled frieze covered with cornices, separating the ground floor from the first floor. The frieze is filled with rectangular window panels with a stucco decoration provided by a repetitive floral motif.
Between the first and second floor storeys, there is a narrow meandering frieze whose line is interrupted by the inter-window pilasters. Over the frieze, there are convex window panels decorated with centrally placed square buttons lined with astragal edges.
Under the third floor windows, there are square, smooth-surfaced panels. The attic level in the central part of the façade is separated at the bottom by a cordon cornice, whereas at the top by a stepped crown cornice, also encircling the tops of the bay window overhangs. The attic windows are lined by the bands.
The façades of the side annexes are decorated in the same way as the rear façade of the front building. They have profiled ground floor window bands, rectangular panels between the windows, some of them faced off with speckled plaster, as well as the cordon cornices and a crowning cornice.