Karolis Banys and Petras Gaidamavičius founded the Art Deco Museum in Kaunas several years ago. Last year, they also opened the Amsterdam School Museum, inviting visitors to explore the luxurious urban interiors of the First Republic of Lithuania.
“Ten years ago, we discovered in ourselves a great desire to know more about architecture not only from the outside but also from the inside. For us, the most interesting part of architecture is not just the interior, but the people who lived there,” Karolis and Petras say.
The only building in the Amsterdam School architectural style in Lithuania was built in 1928 on Vytautas Avenue in Kaunas. Henoch Pumpyansky lived in one of the apartments of the building, which now houses the Amsterdam School Museum.
“We were immediately curious to find out who lived here so beautifully in our small, modest Lithuania, in Kaunas,” says Karolis, one of the museum founders.
“When we did the historical research, we realised that at least in this city, during the interwar period, it was not just one person who lived like this, but thousands of families. So, we decided to recreate it,” he adds.
The 136-square-metre apartment has 5 rooms, 2 balconies, and a huge terrace overlooking the slopes of Kaunas’ Žaliakalnis. The founders have filled the spaces of the apartment-museum with Modernist and Amsterdam School-style furniture, chandeliers, crockery, books, and other decorations.
“The apartment features Pumpyansky’s office. We sometimes joke that people think remote work came about during the pandemic, but it’s not true. Pumpyansky already worked from home during the interwar period because he had an office in his apartment,” Karolis explains. “There is also a dining room, which was just for eating. Then, of course, the socialising and politicking moved behind the sliding doors into the living room.”
“And what if you have guests and forget to bring sweets? In this apartment, that’s not a big deal because, since 1928, it had integrated bells to summon the staff,” Petras continues.
The Amsterdam School Museum organises unique experiential excursions, which allow guests to see up close and feel with all their receptors how people lived during the period of the First Lithuanian Republic. The founders say they are creating a museum that they would want to visit themselves.
“We want it to be as open and understandable as possible. We allow the visitors to touch the furniture, which is a very big experience: to touch it, to sit down, to smell it, to lie on the bed,” Petras says.
At the end of the tour, visitors also get to know what happened to some of the inhabitants of this unique house.
“Sara Ginaitė-Rubinson wrote about it in great detail in her memoir. She was here in this house when, in the summer of 1941, the local Nazi collaborators broke in, took five men who lived here into the yard, and just shot them,” Karolis says.
“When people see the beauty of the place after being here for two hours, they start to dream about how we would be living in Lithuania today if it were not for the occupiers. They realise very well what a tragedy the war is and how important it is to make sure that Lithuania continues to be free and independent today,” he adds.
Karolis and Petras, who have founded two unique apartment-museums, are not planning to stop. In Šakiai District, they are preparing to restore the Kaimelis Manor, which will invite visitors to experience 19th-century living.
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