In the end of the 1930s there was a plan to establish a multifunctional culture center in Kudirkos Naumiestis, which would host a small three-room hotel, a hall, premises of the Court, Museum and Reading room, a restaurant, a post and, of course, post manager’s flat. Without explicitly analyzing architectural theories and simply by considering the simplest practical needs, it was thought of to create an object, which in nowadays terminology would be called a multifunctional public residential complex. However the project is interesting not only for its function. On one hand, we can see yet another unfinished interesting and original example of Lithuanian modernism in a province city, while on the other, the information remains about how the idea was developed and it allows to understand the social and political lifestyle of those days.
From a vivid letter of Kudirkos Naumiestis mayor Zigmantas Skirgaila, addressed to the director of Municipalities’ department, we can have a rather live view of those days city’s updates: “Unfortunate consequences for our city’s cultural development, which had been forming for a number of years, weakened the city so much, that the Municipality and the Government’s special support cannot coordinate the most primitive conditions for city’s cultural development. Eeach year a number of tourists not only from Lithuania, but also from Germany visit the city; each year we attract an international borders’ investigation commission, and we have no sufficient place to host them. Organizations: the shooters, young-Lithuanians, firefighters and others, also have no housing places. We do not have a hall for evenings and cinema, for example, the shooters cinema for the second year stays at the “Society’s Cage” of “Žiburys”, only because of a special permission provided by the Minister of the Interior. Even though city’s municipality was active to plan to build buildings, which “the facade of the representational building will be clearly seen from Germany”, these visions remained unfinished.
Vaidas Petrulis