Formation of the Street
Kurbasa Street was laid out in the 18th century. On the maps of Lviv from 1829 and 1848, it is depicted with separate wooden houses. In the 1820s and 1830s, one of these houses was the residence of the composer Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, the younger son of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. However, this building has not survived to the present day.
Builders and Styles
The building at 3 L. Kurbasa Street was constructed in 1909 in the style of modernized historicism, based on the design by architects Zygmunt Fedorowski and Stanisław Maczudzinski.
Who is the Owner?
The first two floors of the building were intended for the restaurant of Franciszek Moshkovich with the cabaret-theater “Casino de Paris.”
What Does the Building Look Like?
This is a five-story brick building with plastered walls, integrated into the dense urban development of the city block. The building has a pyramidal roof covered with tiles.
The facade of the building is characterized by the dominance of vertical elements. On the three upper floors, the facade is adorned with bundles of half-columns resting on consoles with masks, and topped with gothic towers and sculptures of gargoyles. Above the cornice, there is a parapet with tracery. The vertical accents are complemented by horizontal lines of cornices and entablatures, which divide the facade into tiers. Above the main entrance, which leads to the theater foyer, there is a wide balcony, while the upper floors can be accessed through a side portal. The windows are pointed-arched and rectangular.
In plan, the building has a trapezoidal shape. The lower floors accommodate a horseshoe-shaped auditorium with a stage, while the upper floors housed rooms of the former hotel, with a corridor-sectional layout.
The exterior decoration features Gothic motifs (pointed arches, finials, tracery), combined with decorative elements characteristic of the Art Nouveau style. Some elements of the original interior have been preserved in the hall.
Interesting Facts
The first two floors of this building were intended for the restaurant of Franciszek Moshkovich with the cabaret-theater “Casino de Paris.” The theater featured an oval hall 11.5 meters deep with a stage and a balcony with boxes. The upper floors housed the “Belveder” hotel. From 1920 to 1939 and 1941 to 1944, the “Bagatelle” cabaret with dancing operated here, and the “Patria” hotel was on the upper floors.
On December 19, 1939, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR passed a resolution on the organization of artistic institutions in the western regions of Ukraine, according to which in 1940 the premises of the cabaret-theater were transferred to the Lviv Regional Philharmonic. Later, the building housed the Palace of Pioneers, the House of Folk Creativity, the department of musical-theatrical literature of the Y. Galan Regional Library, and the Regional Scientific and Methodological Center for Folk Creativity. Since the early 1990s, the Lviv Academic Theater named after Les Kurbas has operated here, which received the “academic” status in 2007.
What is Here Now?
Today, this is the building of the Lviv Theater named after Les Kurbas.
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Official website of the Lviv Academic Theater named after Les Kurbas (Archived on June 20, 2013, in the Wayback Machine).
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Les Kurbas: The Smart Harlequin (Archived on February 23, 2020, in the Wayback Machine).
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Liza Oliinyk’s “Les Kurbas – The Smart Harlequin: A Portrait Collage” (Archived on October 21, 2020, in the Wayback Machine).
