Okay, let's get into this. I want you to picture
a survivor. But I'm not talking about a person.
I'm talking about a building. And not, you know,
some stone fortress or a concrete bunker. Which
you might expect, given the history of the region
we're talking about. Exactly. I'm talking about
a wooden house. Which, in the context of 20th
century European history, is a very fragile thing
to be. Incredibly fragile. We are heading into
the forests of Poland today, to a place called
Podkoa Luszna. And standing there is a structure
that has seen, well, basically the entire turbulent
arc of the last hundred plus years. It's seen
everything. The end of empires, huge literary
movements, two world wars. Total abandonment
and then somehow a resurrection. It's a remarkable
case study. We usually look at history through,
you know, dates and battles. But looking at it
through the lens of a single address. 7 Jarsua
Iwaskiewicz Street. It just gives you a completely
different texture of the past. I love that. A
specific address grounds it all. So today we're
doing a deep dive into Villa Ida. We've got a
stack of historical records, architectural notes,
cultural biographies, all to figure out how this
one house went from an industrialist summer home
to a hub for famous poets, then fell into complete
ruin and somehow came back to life as a center
for art. And the mission here really is to get
at the soul of a building. What's so fascinating
about Villa Ida is its cyclical nature. You'll
notice, no matter what history throws at it,
and it throws a lot, the house always seems to
find its way back to art. It's like the wood
itself has a muscle memory for creativity. But
before we get to the poetry in the ruin, we have
to lay the foundation. We have to go back to
the beginning. Right. It was built circa 1900.
So right at that transition from the 19th to
the 20th century. A time of immense optimism
in that part of the world. And it was built by
a man named Stanislaw Wilhelm Lilpop. Now that
name, Lilpop, it carries some serious weight
in that region's history. It does. The Lilpops
were huge players in the industrial development
of Warsaw. So when Stanislaw Wilhelm Lilpop builds
this villa, he's not just, you know, putting
up a shack in the woods. He's making a statement.
A big one. About leisure, about nature, a certain
kind of lifestyle. But the material choice is
what really struck me. Wood. In a region that
was about to become a corridor for two of the
most destructive wars in history. Building in
wood feels almost, I don't know, naive. Or at
least incredibly vulnerable. And it is honorable.
Wood is susceptible to everything. Fire, shelling,
rot, damp. So the fact that it's still standing
in Paco Alucia is... What, a statistical anomaly?
It really is. Most of its wooden contemporaries
are long gone. But you have to remember the context
of Podcoalition itself. It was designed as a
garden city. The architecture was meant to blend
with the forest. Undominated. Exactly. So it
starts as this idyllic retreat. But the story
moves on to the next generation, and this is
where the house really gets its character. Ownership
passes to Anna Ivoskevich. Who was born Anna
Lilpop. Right. And her husband, Yaroslav Ivoskevich.
Now. I spent some time on him because he's a
key figure here. To just call him a writer feels
like a huge understatement. Oh, he's monumental,
a titan in Polish literature. And his presence
at Villa Ida completely changes the building's
function. How so? It stops being just a quiet
summer home for a rich family, and it turns into
a kind of cultural gravity well. When you have
a figure like a Voskiewicz living there, people
come to him. And that pull brings us to the Scamander
group. This is the part of the research that
I just I love this part. The villa became a meeting
place for these poets. And from what I gathered,
Skamander wasn't your grandfather's poetry club.
No, not at all. And this is crucial context.
The Skamander poets were the absolute rebels
of their time. Before them, Polish poetry was,
well, it was very heavy. Burden with patriotic
duty, national mourning, all about maintaining
the Polish spirit while the country was partitioned.
It was very serious, somber stuff. And Skamander
just flipped the table. They smashed the table
they wanted to write about right now. about biology,
city streets, crowds, just ordinary life using
everyday language. So you have this traditional
wooden villa in a forest. But inside, the conversation
is radical. It's young, it's loud, and it's completely
breaking with tradition. I love that contrast.
And the records say it wasn't just a closed club
either. It was a meeting place for the whole
artistic community, an open house for ideas.
A true salon, really. But we have to be careful
not to just romanticize it as this peaceful utopia.
Because this is all happening against a very
unstable backdrop. Right. World War I enters
the chat. And the source material says the villa
was partially destroyed. It took a direct hit.
This is what we were saying about the vulnerability
of wood. It doesn't take much to just wipe it
off the map. And yet the Ayahuasca family didn't
just pack up and leave, which is... It's a testament
to their attachment to the place. Most people,
if their country house gets partially blown up,
they'd probably stay in the city. But they stayed.
They patched it up. They kept the lights on.
And that decision is so important. It meant the
art, the conversations could continue. But then
we move into the 1930s and the story shifts again.
The Bohemian Hub era comes to an end. And we
enter what you called the guest house era. Yeah.
This is a major pivot. The villa changes ownership.
And more importantly, its function changes. It's
not a private home or a literary salon anymore.
It becomes a commercial guest house. In reading
between the lines here, the whole vibe just tanks.
The records say guests would stay for a few hours
or a few days. Now, a few days sounds like a
little vacation. A few hours, that suggests something
else. It suggests transience. Yeah. Utility.
Nothing more. It feels like the building lost
its dignity. You go from having the greatest
literary minds of a generation arguing about
poetry in the living room. To anonymous travelers
checking in for a nap and then just leaving.
It's the difference between dwelling in a space
and just occupying it. That's a great way to
put it. In the Scamander era, the house was a
participant. It held their memories. In the guesthouse
era, it's just a backdrop, a commodity. A purely
utilitarian space. And honestly, this feels like
the first step toward the edge of the cliff.
Because what comes next isn't a recovery. It's
the crash. The dark ages of Villeita, the post
-World War II period. This part of the story
is. It's just sad to read. After World War II,
the ownership situation becomes chaotic. The
records say it changed hands multiple times.
Which is a very polite way of saying no one wanted
the responsibility for it. Right. I mean, in
post -war Poland, maintaining a big old wooden
villa, that was a huge burden. Resources were
gone. People were just trying to survive. A poetic
summer home from 1900 was not a priority. And
with that instability comes the physical decay.
The text says it gradually fell into abandonment.
And you have to imagine what that means for a
wooden house in a forest. No heat, no paint,
no one fighting back the damp. It's a death sentence.
The wood just wants to return to the earth. We
came so close to losing Villa Ida completely
then. It was a ghost of itself, just rotting
away. It's the classic narrative valley. You
go from the high of the Scamander poets to the
absolute low of this rotting, forgotten shell.
But... And this is where we're talking about
it today. The story didn't end there. The house
attracts saviors. It seems to. Enter the Cloteau
family. The turning point. They acquire the villa,
and they don't just bulldoze it to build something
new, which probably would have made more financial
sense. They decide to save it. They start a partial
renovation. And renovation here isn't just fixing
a leaky roof. It's an act of cultural rescue.
And there's a specific name mentioned who drives
this new era. Wissawaklakaf. Under her, the villa
doesn't just get repaired physically. It gets
a whole new mission. It does. It doesn't go back
to being a private home. Yeah. And it definitely
doesn't go back to being a guest house. It goes
back to its roots. It becomes the headquarters
of the Alternative Foundation. Yeah. And I look
into what they did there. It was theater workshops
and educational activities for kids. But the
methodology was what stood out. They used the
lens of art and artistic games. That phrase,
artistic games, it's so resonant. It connects
right back to Scamander, doesn't it? It absolutely
does. What were the Scamander poets doing? They
were playing games with language. They were experimenting,
role -playing. It's a very high -level intellectual
game. And now, decades later, in the exact same
rooms where they play their word games. You have
children playing theater games. Wow. Now, the
level of sophistication is different, of course.
A seven -year -old in a drama class isn't Jaroslaw
Wyskiewicz. But the fundamental human activity,
it's identical. Imagination. Performance. Using
the space to create something new. Precisely.
It feels like the house was waiting for that
specific kind of energy to come back. The Cloteau
family didn't just fix the timber, they rebooted
the soul of the place. That's a great way to
put it. They rebooted the operating system. They
understood that the value of Villa Ida wasn't
just in its beams, but in its capacity to house
creativity. And that momentum carries it right
into the modern era. Because in 2010, it gets
official recognition. It's listed as a historical
monument. Which gives it the legal armor it needs.
That means it can't just be torn down on a whim.
It's recognized as part of the national identity.
And then just a year later... In 2011, it levels
up again. It becomes the home of a local history
museum. But not a dusty, silent one. Not at all.
The list of what happens there now is fantastic.
Performances, author meetings, concerts, exhibitions,
and my personal favorite, poetry evenings. The
poetry came back. It's full circle. I mean, can
you imagine going to a poetry night there today?
You're sitting in the same acoustic space where
this commander group sat a century ago? It collapses
time. When you're in a space like that, doing
the same activity as the ghosts of the past,
the distance between, say, 1920 and today feels
very, very thin. It validates the entire struggle.
The house survived shelling. It survived the
indignity of the guesthouse era. It survived
the rot. All of that just to get back to this.
People sharing ideas in a room. It shows that
culture is resilient, but it isn't self -sustaining.
It needs a vessel. Ideas need a place to land,
a physical home. And Viliida proves a building
can be that home. Even one made of something
as fragile as wood. Especially then. So if we
zoom out, what's the big takeaway? Why should
we care about this one house in Poland? I think
it's a reminder to look closer at the buildings
around us. We walk past old dilapidated structures
and we just see ruin. We don't see the layers.
We don't see the salon that used to be in the
living room. Or the history in the floorboards.
Villa Ida was written off. It was abandoned.
But someone saw the potential to reconnect it
to its own story. And by doing that, they preserved
the lineage. If the Cloteau family hadn't stepped
in, the physical link to Scamander in that specific
spot would just be gone. We'd have the books.
But standing in the room where the book was discussed
is a completely different experience. It makes
these titans of literature feel like real people
who just needed a place to hang out. Exactly.
Well, we have tracked the journey from the first
plank laid by Stanislaw Wilhelm Lilpop to the
kids acting out plays there today. It's been
a wild ride. A complete narrative arc. It really
is. But before we wrap up, I have a question
that's been sort of nagging me. We talk about
the house remembering, but those kids, the ones
playing the artistic games there now. They probably
don't know the deep history. They might not know
who Lil Pop was or the full weight of Jaroslav
Ayahuasca, which they're just kids. They are.
And that raises a really fascinating question
about, well, the metaphysics of a space. Go on.
Does the space influence them anyway? If a building
retains a memory of its past, not in a ghost
story way, but in its bones. Its architecture,
its acoustics. Right. The way the light hits
the floor. Does the legacy of those great poets.
somehow seep into the art those children are
creating right now. You mean, is the creativity
literally in the walls? Think about it. Are those
kids acting with a little more conviction or
coming up with a slightly better line of dialogue
because the room itself was shaped by and for
those very things? Wow. Does the history of a
place shape the art made inside it, even if the
artist has no idea that history is there? That's
a beautiful thought. That maybe the house is
teaching them without them even knowing it. It's
certainly something to think about the next time
you walk into an old building. You never know
who or what is influencing you. Absolutely. Well,
on that note, we're going to close the doors
on Villa Ada for today. A huge thank you to the
historical records and researchers who kept these
details alive. And to the people who are keeping
that villa standing against all the odds. Indeed.
Thanks for listening to this deep dive. Keep
your eyes open for the history hiding in your
own neighborhood. Until next time.