Bench with a sculpture of Dr. Marian Pelczar

Technique: cast bronze, seat made of epoxy concrete

Object: Monument in the form of a bench with a statue of Dr. Marian Pelczar (b. 1905, d. 1983), historian, director of the Municipal Library and the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Pelczar secured the high scientific rank of the library by acquiring the collections of the Municipal Library, the State Archive and smaller libraries that were dispersed at the end of World War II. He also co-edited the first volumes of Rocznik Gdański (The Annual of Gdańsk) reissued after the war. The sculpted figure of Dr. Pelczar sits casually on the bench, with his left leg over his right. His right hand rests on four books stacked on top of each other. The left hand, in which he holds a book, is stretched out in a gesture of handing it to someone to read. On the front part of the seat of the bench, there is an inscription reading: “Dr. Marian Pelczar, the first post-war director of the Gdańsk Library”.

Place: Wałowa Street, in front of the entrance to the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Wałowa Street is one of the most important places in the city’s history. The connection between Wałowa Street (in Stare Miasto) and Wałowy Square (in Stare Przedmieście) describes the circle of modern city fortifications that is near-forgotten in terms of urban planning. This circle includes the streets: Wałowa, Sienna Grobla, Długa Grobla, Reduta Dzik, Reduta Miś, Reduta Wyskok, Grobla Kamienna and Wałowy Square. The circle of fortifications was completed along the present-day Okopowa, Wały Jagiellońskie and Wały Piastowskie streets, and fortifications on the hills of Grodzisko on the western side of the city.

After the war, the circle of streets accompanying the embankments was perfectly clear and equipped with railway tracks, fragments of which can be seen in the street surfaces. Recent years saw the eastern part of the extension of WZ Route carried out along the old embankment outlines (in the fragment between Długa Grobla and Reduta Dzik) and the elimination of the ferry crossing on the Motława River (between Wałowa Street and Sienna Grobla). This obliterated the continuity of urban interiors that remembered the modern embankments.

The embankment circle has an interesting beginning and end also in terms of its utility programme. It begins in the western part of Wałowa Street, where there are two buildings: the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the informal entrance to Secondary School no. 1 named after Nicolaus Copernicus. It ends in Wałowy Square, where there is the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts. The bench with the sculpture of Dr. Marian Pelczar is compositionally attached to the façade of the old building of the Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Information about the author: Adam Arabski (b. 1978) is a sculptor. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, graduating from Prof. Sławoj Ostrowski’s studio in 2004. Since 2007, he has run the sculptural techniques studio at the Secondary Art School in Gdynia-Orłowo. Arabski is the author of many outdoor sculptural forms.

Condition of the object: good

Owner/guardian: Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, sponsor: Gdańsk Buses and Trams municipal company

Author of the entry: inventory made by the Gdańsk University of Technology team, description of the place: Jacek Dominiczak, additional information: Małgorzata Paszylka-Glaza.