Neo-Gothic in the residential architecture of Toruń – a building tradition or a fashion for historicism?

The article addresses the problem of sources and patterns for Neo-Gothic in residential architecture of the 19th and early 20th centuries, using the example of Toruń. Was the Gothic building tradition used here and the aesthetics of the façades of bourgeois tenements applied, or did they rather refer to the patterns developed in the 19th-century “centres of Neo-Gothic”? The subject of this study are examples of tenement houses and villas in Toruń in the spirit of Neo-Gothic. The aim of the considerations was to determine the influence of the local building tradition and 19th century Neo-Gothic patterns on the Toruń realisations of that period. A stylistic comparative analysis of Toruń’s residential buildings of the 19th century with the Gothic town houses of the city and the Neo-Gothic buildings of the Hanoverian school, the most influential in the area, was carried out. An analysis of the historical context was also carried out. The investigations were based on the author’s in situ research in Toruń and Hanover. The research led to the conclusion that external influences predominated. Local housing patterns from the Gothic period were not functionally suitable for transformation into a new language of forms, so motifs were rather taken from monumental buildings by fitting them into the massing of a 19th-century townhouse or villa, using ready-made designs from the Hanoverian school.