In the 1930s, the Bank of Lithuania built 8 new buildings in various cities in Lithuania. One of them was in Tauragė.
At the end of 1934, a conceptual design competition was announced to design a building complex of the Bank of Lithuania’s Tauragė Branch. The building site was chosen at the intersection of S. Dariaus ir S. Girėno avenue and Vytauto street. The Bank of Lithuania's buildings were usually designed to stand right next to the street, but the terms of Tauragė complex competition set out that the building has to be further from the street in order to build a square in front of the building. The main characteristics that the complex should feature were also set out: a 40 square metre lobby, a banking operations hall for 18-20 employees, a 100 square metre space for visitors, a 25-30 square metre director’s office, a place for an archive, a cash vault, a strongroom, a security room and other rooms. The director’s apartment had to be comprised of 5 rooms, a kitchen, a maid’s room, a hall, two separate entrances and other sanitary and utility rooms.
The projects had to be submitted to the Bank of Lithuania in Kaunas by 2 January 1935. Twenty projects were submitted for the competition. Building the complexes of the Bank of Lithuania was a matter of prestige, while the awards were also quite significant. The first place and a 1,000 litas award went to Arnas Funkas, the second place and a 700 litas award - to Nikolajus Mačiulskis (born in 1903) and the third place along with a 500 litas award - to Stasys Kudokas (1898-1988).
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Arnas Funkas (1898-1957) was a famous architect and engineer of the interwar period, one of the representatives of functionalist architecture, a press associate. Quite a few of famous buildings included in the list of cultural heritage that were designed by Funkas remain to this day: Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas (1930), Pranas Gudavičius and Aleksandra Iljinienė house in Kaunas (1934), joint-stock insurance company Lithuanian Lloyds which is now Kaunas County Governor’s Administration (1938) and many others. He was also the architect of the Bank of Lithuania’s buildings in Raseiniai (1931), Utena (1933) and elsewhere. He was famous for his unique interior designs.
The building complex project in Tauragė was probably revised alongside the Bank of Lithuania’s regular architect Mykolas Songaila, because this building’s architectural stylistics were similar to those designed by Songaila. The project was approved on 12 March 1935.
The building was built by many contractors, which were mostly from Kaunas. Locksmithing was done by a locksmith J. Švarcas from Kaunas, the furniture was made at K. Petrikas furniture factory in Kaunas (which also made furniture for the Bank’s central complex in Kaunas). The general contractor A. Balčiauskas was also from Kaunas.
The building complex was completed quite quickly, in 1936. However, the construction did not go completely smoothly. According to the press of the time, 15 to 20 construction workers worked on site. It was not an easy job and the pay was only 30 cents an hour. Workers were not satisfied with the conditions and asked for a pay raise. When they received a negative answer, they went on strike that lasted for two days. Finally, they started working again. After the strike, they agreed on a 3 litas pay for 8 hours of work (prior to that, they had to work for 10 hours).
The building also received some criticism. On 10 November 1935, the Senior Inspector of Construction and Land Roads paid a visit to the construction site of Tauragė Branch complex and issued a report to the Minister of the Interior. In it, he wrote: “the building, due to its expensiveness and splendour, is not compatible with the general scenery of Tauragė town. The public clearly has a negative view of this expensive and splendid construction. Farmers will be ashamed to enter the white building adorned in marble imitation.” It was suggested to revise the project because, according to the Inspector, “it there has been the discussion about the Bank of Lithuania’s buildings being too luxurious for the province for several years already. However, we are yet to see any changes to the bank’s construction policy. This bank in Taurine will probably be the most splendid of all the other banks in the province.”
The project really was not a modest one. It cost about 400 thousand litas to the Bank of Lithuania. The two-story building with a square was surrounded by a fence decorated in ethnic style ornaments and to get inside, you would have to pass through a grand gate-colonnade boasting the words “The Bank of Lithuania”. A semicircular banking operations hall surrounded by a colonnade was situated facing the yard. The architectural style of the building is classicism, but modern technologies were used to build it (for example, reinforced concrete). Another extraordinary feature of the building was a spacious terrace surrounded by columns on the second floor. This architectural element was rare in the interwar buildings.
The building was significantly damaged during World War II. It was later repaired and in 1957, a hotel and a restaurant started operating on its premises. In 1978, a major repair was done and the building became a bank once again.
Nowadays, it also houses a bank. However, it is now a commercial bank (Luminor). If you ever get a chance, make sure to visit this unique legacy of the Bank of Lithuania.
