On Vienna's Neo-baroque architecture outside Vienna : the Goetz-Okocimski family Palace in Brzesko-Okocim

The article considers the issue of neo-baroque architecture in palace at Brzesko-Okocim, a small town in Galicia lying some 50 km east of Cracow. The palace was built in 1898-1900 and extended in 1908-1910 for Jan Albin Goetz-Okocimski, a wealthy Galician entrepreneur, owner of one of the largest breweries in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and simultaneously an influential Polish aristocrat and politician. The oldest part of the palace was designed by the famous Austrian architectural atelier of Ferdinand Fellner and Herman Helmer. Its extension was carried out by Leopold Simony, another Austrian architect, holding the position of professor at the Viennese Technische Hochschule. The palace is surrounded by a wide English garden and consists of a large two-storey hall with impressive stairs, long gallery with hunting trophies, sumptuous chapel and winter garden designed by the prominent Swedish architect Carl Gustav Swensson. Constructed in an astonishingly homogenous Viennese neo-baroque style, it differed from other Galician chateaux and at the same time was close to many contemporaneous buildings constructed by Fellner & Helmer, like e.g. the so called National Casino in Lwów and Karol Lanckoroński’s palace in Vienna (destroyed). Up until now, remarkably little attention has been paid to the building that, in fact, belonged to one of the wealthiest and the most modern private residences of fin-de-siècles Austro-Hungary. Even considering its present state of preservation (after 1944 the building was abandoned and a large part of its furnishing dispersed) Goetz-Okocimski’s palace is still an outstanding example of late-nineteenth and early twentieth century residential architecture. The thorough recent restoration of the building (2010–2012) offers a rare opportunity to fill this gap and to analyze its architecture with even greater depth and breadth. The aim of this paper is therefore to reveal essential facts from the history of the palace as well as to discuss the conditions under which it was constructed. Through analysis of original designs and documents, the history of the building's construction will be retraced thus contributing to the issue of the Viennese firm's, Fellner & Helmer activity in the field of residential architecture (these architects being usually discussed in the context of theatre architecture). Proper attention will be also paid to the palace's extension performed by Leopold Simony. Finally the building's predominant neobaroque style will be considered