In 1902 he built the family home which received the name of Ornak

The timber used was the best spruce and was brought from Babia Góra by the most renowned Zakopane carpenters of those times, the Wirmańskis. It is a classic example of the Witkiewicz style in architecture. The logs (wooden beams used for the walls) are of a very rarely encountered width. They were brought tightly together, not like later, with a space left between them filled with plaitwork made from sawdust. Moss was used for packing on the outside.

The house then stood on its own on the sunny meadows below the Biały Valley. It is hard to believe this today looking at the surrounding area – huge old trees, numerous houses, streets … - but the old times have been preserved in photographs exhibited in the museum.

Sokołowski continued his academic work as a forester and protector of the natural environment.

He organised the Higher School of Forests in Lvov, and became its principal. He also worked for the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, from which he received an honorary doctorate. He wrote numerous works on the cultivation of forests and the protection of the natural environment, including Tatry jako Park Narodowy [The Tatras as a National Park] which was of great significance for the setting up of the later Tatra National Park. He was acknowledged the founding father of Polish forestry. He died in Ornak in 1942. In 1965, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth, a plaque in honour of the Professor and funded by the Polish Forestry Society, was hung on one of the walls of the house, while the natural reserve lying in the vicinity of the Biały Valley was named after him.

Before all this happened, however, the Sokołowskis had six children, five sons and a daughter. The boys became involved in climbing and in the 1920s set the trend for mountain tourism. This period in Tatra Mountain Climbing received the name of sokołowszczyzna, after their name. The house was host to many outstanding people, some of them being guests, others simply holiday-makers. The famous actress Irena Solska, for example, would spend the summer months there surrounded by a circle of admirers.

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The Second Period of the Villa’s History

Difficult times came with World War II and the German occupation. Just before war broke out the Professor’s eldest son, Marian, died. He had fought in the Polish Legions during World War I, was professor in botany at the Agricultural University in Warsaw, and continued the work of his father. He took part in the pioneering research on groups of plants from the Tatras, fought for the creation of the Tatra National Park, and was a member of the State Council for the Preservation of the Natural Environment.

The Sokołowski brothers no longer lived in Zakopane. Adam became an outstanding physician and a professor at the Jagiellonian University. Stanisław was a geologist and also became professor at the Institute of Geology in Warsaw. In the post-war years, he wrote up a comprehensive geological map of the Tatras and the Podhale region, and discovered reserves of geothermal waters on the Antołówka hill in Zakopane. Witold was a philosopher and a member of the Polish Socialist Party. He not only had leftist views but also fought for Polish independence. During the Second World War he spent time in captivity in the Soviet Union, later joining the Polish army commanded by General Anders. He promised himself never to return to Poland as long as “the best of political systems” existed there. He died in Australia in 1987, not living to see that long-awaited day when Poland finally managed to overthrow the Communist regime. Jan was a painter who also became a professor at Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts. After the Second World War, he led the works on the polichromy of Warsaw’s Old Town market-square. He was also responsible for decorating the district of Mariensztat with its famous clock.

The only sibling still alive is the Professor’s daughter and youngest child Zofia, the present owner of Ornak. She inherited the house from her mother. Married to a rich industrialist, Tadeusz Klimczak, and the most well-off member of the family, she was the one to keep the family house going. Its upkeep continued to require unlimited funds.

In the meantime, communism took hold in Poland.

After the War and with the introduction of Communism, the Klimczaks’ glass foundry was confiscated by the state, with other properties experiencing a similar fate. Their villa was also threatened with strangers being allocated accommodation there, and there was not enough money even for the most necessary conservational works. On Christmas Eve 1951, it seemed nothing would save the house from total disaster. A van full of furniture drove up in front of the veranda. The house was to be a holiday home for comrades from the Secret Police. The house was in real danger, but the whole family was determined to do everything in its power to hang on to it. It was Witold from Australia who came to the rescue. It so happened that as a member of the Polish Socialist Party before the war he knew Józef Cyrankiewicz, the long-standing prime minister of post-war Poland. An appropriate letter addressed to the latter did the trick. The Secret Police had to withdraw. In retaliation, Anna, the Professor’s grand-daughter and Zofia Klimczak’s daughter, was refused entry to all Polish universities for the next two years.

For all Communist-minded officials, the villa was unacceptable. From the material point of view, it was in a state of complete ruin, whereas from the ideological point of view, it belonged to a social-class enemy. In order to save it from total annihilation, with the help of Adam and the recommendation of Marian Kornecki, a renowned art historian and conservator of historical wooden buildings, it was registered as an official heritage site.

Instead of chance lodgers being allocated accommodation in the villa by local officials, a cousin of the owners, Dr Stanisław Bafia, received the upstairs flat. At that time he was head of the Hospital of Infectious Diseases in Zakopane and President of the Association of the People of Podhale. After many years, he moved out, leaving the flat in the same state as when he moved in.

Through the intervention of Stanisław Sokołowski Junior, the downstairs part of the house was taken over by the Institute of Geology as a holiday-home for geologists. In the same capacity it was later used for many years by workers of Huta Warszawa [The Warsaw Steelworks].

In the 1980s, Ornak experienced yet again something different. Due to the political activities of Anna Walenta, Zofia Klimczak’s daughter, the house served the underground trade union Solidarity as a point of transfer for illegal newspapers and organised meetings for independence activists from Poland and Czechoslovakia.

It was in this way that the house survived, though in very poor condition, until 1989.

This was thanks to the great effort and at the cost of a great deal of sacrifice on the part of the owners, Zofia and Tadeusz Klimczak, who, from the times of World War II, kept an eye on everything. From the mid-1970s they also lived there. Taduesz Klimczak died in Ornak in 1985. Zofia Klimczak moved to Warsaw in 1995.

Thus, the second chapter of the history of "Ornak" came to a close.

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Ornak’s Most Recent History

With the fall of Communism in 1989 there was a return of free market economy. Huta Warszawa became Huta Luccini, which neither had the money nor the desire to continue renting Ornak. On the other hand, Zofia Klimczak, after a long drawn-out process, inherited   a small some of money from her late brother Witold’s estate. At that time the sum of a few thousand dollars seemed to give unlimited possibilities. Zofia Klimczak’s son Tadeusz Junior, together with his wife Aldona, started renovation works on the house.

The foundations of the whole house were deepened by one and a half metres. This was to facilitate extra kitchen and bathroom space in the basement. Then, due to Poland’s Great Reform and the rebuilding of the Polish market economy, the dollar suddenly lost is unnatural value. The inherited money was no longer enough to even pay for the work that had already been done on the villa. Instead of a comfortable guesthouse there was only a shell of a building. When looking down from the first floor through one of the holes left after removing the chimneys, one could see the earth floor of the basement. There was nothing on the ground level. The partition walls were standing on provisional poles, there was no heating, and instead of a garden in front of the house, there were huge piles of earth removed from the cellar. The situation was desperate.

The Klimczaks started investigating the issue of a bank loan. It was extremely difficult to persuade any bank to give them a loan to complete the renovation of an old house that would be only able to offer four hotel rooms. How would they be able to repay the loan? This question as well as working out a business plan led to questioning the sense of the whole venture. This was when the idea of a guesthouse that would also be a museum appeared.

Read about the idea of a museum guesthouse >

The Museum Guesthouse

The idea of changing Ornak into such a museum guesthouse turned out to be a convincing argument, and a loan was granted by the Polish-American Enterprise Fund. The conditions, however, were difficult – high interest rates and a very short period of grace. Although work on the house took on a much faster pace, the instalments on the loan had to be paid and it was still impossible to take in guests. Then, unexpectedly, the house itself came to our aid. 

In Ornak there had always been talk about a hidden treasure, but it was spoken about a little oddly, with a smile of disbelief and a slight dose of irony.

It was also sometimes treated as a family joke. Somebody was supposed to have buried something in the cellar, but it was not known exactly where or whether at all. Just to be on the safe side, Zofia Klimczak and her seven-year-old grand-daughter Kasia kept an eye on the workers who were digging in the cellar. Then one day, they heard the sound of a spade knocking on glass. One of the workers picked up a jar full of gold rings and diamonds. Next to it was another jar half-full of fifty-cent gold coins. It was just like a fairy-tale, but this time it was true. The treasure was sold, with the money going into the bank loan and all the other commitments that had to be met at that time. It was possible, however, to complete all the renovation works. The house now had a new kitchen downstairs, comfortable bathrooms, one for each room, and central heating (the chimneys and stoves were all reconstructed and were ready for use). The heating came from pumping energy from the soil in the garden, an investment financed by the EEC (the predecessor of the European Union) promoting organic sources of energy. The house received its first guests during the Christmas and New Year period of 1992/1993.

The “only” thing the Klimczaks still had to do was pay back the loan. The threat of the bailiff seizing their property (it had been mortgaged) gave them no peace. The problem was that the guesthouse only had four rooms, not forty. The most valuable objects from their Warsaw flat were put up for auction – a beautiful bronze garden sculpture made by Stanisław Jackowski during the 1920s, valuable lamps and pictures. Help in the form of a loan also came from the son of old pre-war friends of the Klimczaks’ parents. They were able to pay the bank back all the money they still owed it.

This last loan the Klimczaks were able to repay after the family managed to regain part of their pre-war property. But this is another story.

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Warsaw, 6th December, 2001

In the summer of 2002, the house received a new shingled roof (600 square metres). The timber used for the shingles was spruce and fir, and they were made by hand by carpenters from Podszkle. They made around 60,000, cutting logs into 60-centimetre pieces, chopping them radially with an axe.

On the roof surfaces that had till then been smooth (the northern, eastern and western sides), additional attic windows were installed that were made according to those in the front of the house (the southern side). These new windows added to the charm of the whole house.

All this was of course done under the eye of a conservator of historical buildings.

In the meantime, Polish bureaucracy had been preparing the owners of Ornak for another surprise. The villa was not to be called a guesthouse and that word was to disappear from its name, official stamps, signs, and from its webpage. The officials started insisting on the owners using the phrase “guest rooms”. According to the statute on tourism, a guesthouse had to fulfil numerous conditions, especially the minimum of seven bedrooms. Although Ornak was extremely spacious, there were only four rooms that could be offered to paying guests. The rest were halls, verandas and spaces that could not be made into comfortable rooms. The owner’s claim that a “museum guesthouse’ was something totally different than the notion of a guesthouse presented in the statute on tourism did not convince the officials. And so the battle has continued into the 21st century.

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Zofia Klimczak died on 27th December 2002. Tadeusz and Aldona Klimczak became the owners of Ornak.

2018

Another major renovation. The attic of the house is carefully insulated. The floors throughout the house are restored. The basement is transformed into a luxurious interior with elegant bathrooms, the kitchen is renovated and gains new equipment, including old, original furniture from the 1930s. A stylish living room is created in the former garage, also furnished with stylish Art Deco furniture.