Bulwary – Embankments

The Vistula was a capricious river, in the previous centuries it had changed its riverbed many times and flooded low-lying areas. Until the 18th century Solec was a street on the riverbank and was often plagued by flooding. The first idea to strengthen the bank and build an “embankment” was muted in the 1920s, when Jerozolimska Avenue was mapped and industry started to develop in the Powiśle district.

A rock embankment was built in 1825 straight in front of the “new Jerozolimska Road (…) on the banks of the Vistula, and there were plans to extend it in the future along the entire length of the Warsaw riverbank. A huge steam mill and a factory with iron products are established next to it. A huge crane to unload goods is placed on the new embankment and the first iron railway with horse-drawn carriages in Poland is built for it.

However, the economic and political situation was not conducive to great plans and investments. The construction was abandoned. Although the line of the rock embankment, which later became the quay, is marked on the 1831 Military Engineers’ Corps plans, the reinforcements had not been made. The “reinforcement” of the entire riverbank prepared by the chief city engineer Aleksander Jotko-Narkiewicz in 1862 also had not been built. However, on Kiryczenka’s plans of 1875 we see an embankment running straight along today’s Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie. The area between the embankment and the riverbank had successively been filled with rubble and soil from the city that was developing dynamically at the time. The idea to build embankments on the land thus made and to regulate the Vistula on this stretch became a realistic proposition only in the early 20th century and was associated with the concept of building a third bridge, today called Poniatowski Bridge, and with the sanitation of Powiśle district. Building commenced in 1906 according to a design by Bartosz and Baliński engineers. The embankment that was built between the Kierbedzia Bridge and today’s Poniatowski Bridge had two levels: a lower one for direct unloading and the upper level for pedestrian traffic. In 1914 works commenced to level out the land, to pave the embankment and establish a park. Elegant buildings started to appear along Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie. The fitting out of the embankments was finally completed in the 1930s. In line with president Stefan Starzyński’s slogan “the city is to front the river”, burdensome chimneys in Powiśle were removed and nearly the entire road was asphalted. The embankments became fashionable places for walks by Varsovians.