Hnat Khotkevych Palace of Culture

Location: Lviv, Ukraine

Constructed: 1933-1938

Architect: Tadeusz Wróbel

Former name: Club of the Union of Municipal Workers of the City of Lviv

Genre: Modernist architecture, former USSR

The building was constructed when Lviv was part of Poland and known as Lwów. The original purpose of the premises was as the Club of the Union of Municipal Workers of the City of Lviv but before work started, 50,000 Polish zlotys were raised towards its costs by collecting 1% of employee’s salaries until the amount was reached. During the earlier years of the city’s Soviet period, the building became the Club of the Lviv Tram and Trolleybus Administration and in the late 1970s, early ‘80s it was expanded and renamed the Nikolai Kuznetsov Palace of Culture. The cultural centre is currently named after Hnat Khotkevych, a prolific Ukrainian writer and musicologist who was arrested, tortured and eventually executed by the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge (1936-1938).