Turn of the century brick tenements with deep courtyards, and the corner of Stalowa and Konopacka that The Pianist built as the ghetto gate.
What Praga-Północ looks like
has the district's tenement rows, three to five storeys, plastered or left as bare brick. Shops still run along the ground floors, with the permanent stalls of the Różycki Bazaar market behind them. Storefront signage is mixed with newer paint work, and the block runs long and mostly unbroken toward Targowa.
Behind the street frontages the courtyards run deep, closed off from the road by a gate or an arch. Several carry small masonry shrines built into a corner or a wall, a figure of the Virgin set behind glass or a metal grille, one of them still standing in the courtyard at Ząbkowska 11.
The former Koneser vodka distillery sits at Ząbkowska 27/31, a neo-Gothic red brick factory complex. Ząbkowska, Nieporęcka, Białostocka and Markowska streets bound it on all four sides. Its casement windows and ground floor flooring have been kept through the conversion, and the block is several connected buildings rather than one.
Prewar tenements survive on this side of the river block after block, plastered brick fronts unbroken by anything more recent than a shopfront sign. Stalowa Street and Mała Street, narrower streets off the same grid, carry the same three to five storey fronts and run for blocks without a gap.
Shot in Praga-Północ
For The Pianist, the production dressed the corner of streets as the passage between the ghetto's large and small sections, with a wooden footbridge built over Stalowa itself. Mała Street carried the ghetto wall for roughly three hundred metres, and the corner with Zaokopowa is where the liquidation scene was filmed. The same street also appears in Pokolenie, Korczak, Miasto 44 and the 1970 series Kolumbowie. The tenement at kept its film set decoration in the gateway after the TV series Dom used its facade.
The Pianist, 2002
The corner of Stalowa and Konopacka
Played the ghetto gate between the large and small ghetto, the Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw, 1940 to 1943
The footbridge and gate were built over Stalowa Street at this junction, recreating the historical passage between the two sections of the ghetto. A few doors south at Stalowa 10 to 12, the same street is where Wladyslaw's father is struck by a German officer and forced off the pavement. Street View
Kraków's Kazimierz has the same turn of the century tenement scale, three to five storeys with courtyards behind, including tenements built in 1896 and 1905 on Miodowa Street. The passage between Józefa Street and Meiselsa Street, known as Schindler's Passage, has the same enclosed courtyard depth as Praga's own yards. It is white-washed and lined with galleries and bars rather than worn. Kazimierz's courtyards near the main square are dressed for visitors, including that passage. A plainer corner with peeling plaster still on it works better for a period frame. Try searching turn of the century tenement now.
Prenzlauer Berg's Gründerzeit tenement blocks went up mostly between 1889 and 1905, five storeys with the same closed courtyard layout behind the street frontage. Kollwitzplatz and the blocks off Kastanienallee keep their plastered facades largely unpainted, close to the grey finish Praga's own tenements carry. Berlin's blocks run a uniform five storeys with heavier stucco cornices than Praga's plainer three to five storey rows, which shows in a wide shot. Try searching Gründerzeit tenement blocks now.
Erzsébetváros in Budapest, Hungary
Budapest's old Jewish quarter has the same courtyard depth, its blocks arranged around interconnected passages like the Gozsdu Udvar, seven linked buildings built in 1901 between Király utca and Dob utca. The scale and the closed block layout are close to Praga's own tenement courtyards. Budapest's Secession facade details and the neon signage now hung through Kazinczy utca's ruin bars would need dressing out for a period frame. Try searching courtyard depth interconnected passages now.
