Różycki Bazaar

The gates bearing the name lead into a trading courtyard between Targowa Street, Ząbkowska Street, and Brzeska Street. The pavilions stand in the open space left in front of the long house that occupied the far part of the plot. The proximity of St. Petersburg Railway Station and Terespol Railway Station connected the courtyard with two flows of goods: peasants brought produce, while wholesalers collected freight from the railway. The wooden stalls, the blue siphon-shaped kiosk, the former gates, and the owner's house have disappeared, but the market's name and the house at fifty-six Targowa Street, from which its daily operations were managed, remain.

Above the entrance is the surname of Julian Józef Różycki. He did not trade at the market, but in pharmacies: he ran two pharmacies in Praga, produced carbonated mineral water, and invested his earnings in real estate. In eighteen seventy-four, Różycki bought a plot at fifty-four Targowa Street. A baker, a blacksmith, a butcher's shop, and a junk dealer were already operating here, but the owner intended to build an ordinary apartment building for rent along the street.

A few years later, the calculation changed. The city authorities were preparing to remove trading from Targowa Street itself: for decades, sellers had occupied the street, and now they would have to look for a new place. The merchant Manas Ryba, who knew local trade well, suggested that Różycki take them onto his private plot. This promised the owner payment for every trading place, but first required leaving valuable land undeveloped.

Różycki abandoned the original plan. In eighteen eighty, he began building a narrow, long house not along Targowa Street but across the plot, with its windows facing the courtyard. Space for stalls remained in front of it. Ryba took on the daily management: he assigned places, collected fees, and settled disputes. Różycki himself appeared here rarely. The administrator ran the bazaar from the neighboring house at fifty-six Targowa Street, which he later bought out.

In July eighteen eighty-two, the street market was closed. The sellers moved their old wooden stalls here along with their goods. That is how the plot between Targowa Street, Ząbkowska Street, and Brzeska Street became a bazaar. The place was also convenient because the roads to St. Petersburg Railway Station and Terespol Railway Station met nearby: peasants brought in produce, wholesalers brought goods from the railway, and Praga residents had a market close to home. Różycki gained tenants, the traders displaced from the street kept their income, and Ryba acquired a business he managed for more than half a century.

The owner's name appeared later, when the name “Różycki Bazaar” was fixed above the gates. A seven-meter blue kiosk shaped like a siphon also recalled the market's connection with the pharmacist: it sold water from Różycki's factory. The siphon was dismantled in nineteen thirty-five, the old gates were removed before the war, the founder's house burned down, and the original stalls were destroyed in nineteen forty-four.

The current pavilions retain the surname of the man who invested the money and the plot. Next door, at house number fifty-six, the address of Manas Ryba has survived—the man who came up with how to place the traders here and who every day turned Różycki's empty courtyard into a bazaar.