History

The first German settlers - clothiers and shoemakers - were brought to Ozorków in 1807 by the then owner of the village, Ignacy Starzyński. An agreement was concluded with them, in which the contracting parties were promised a free place for a church and a cemetery.

In 1814, as soon as a community was established by the Evangelicals living in the settlement and in nearby villages, it was decided that a wooden church would be built.

In 1823, Starzyński applied to the authorities for permission for the construction of a brick temple. He also applied for funds for this purpose from the State Committee for Religion and Culture. Although the requested funding was refused, the Evangelical-Augsburg parish in Ozorków was officially established in 1826. The owner of the village donated a morgen of land for the parish and a garden for the priest. He also agreed to provide an annual salary of 150 rubles for the parish.

The brick church was designed by the architect Bonifacy Witkowski in 1827. Due to disputes over funds for the construction, the project did not commence.

In 1833, the town came into the ownership of Count Feliks Łubieński.

The construction of the present-day church with the bell tower commenced in 1840. The temple was designed by Piotr Frydrych, an architect from Warsaw. He had assisted Antoni Corazzi in the construction of the Grand Theatre in Warsaw and had also worked with the architect Adolf de Schütz. Since 1845, he served as a member of the Governmental Revenue and Treasury Commission.

The temple was built at a cost of PLN 120,000, donated by the industrialists from Ozorków who had come here from Aachen at the beginning of the 19th century – Christian Wilhelm Werner and Maciej Fryderyk Schlosser.

The church was consecrated in October 1842. It has retained its original form to this day.

Description

The church is situated in the central part of Ozorków, at the eastern end of Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński Street, which runs through the entire town. It stands in the middle of a fenced land plot, facing a small square at the end of the street. The building was built in the Classicist style. Its internal décor has Renaissance features.

The hall-type temple was built on a floor plan of a rectangle with an avant-corps in the eastern elevation, housing the sacristy, and two avant-corpses covering the single extreme axes of the front (western) wall. In front of the central axis of the façade, there is a protruding four-column portico, on which a triangular pediment is based.

The church was built from solid ceramic bricks. It is covered with a gable roof and a dome topped with a tall lantern, positioned over the central part of the nave. Both the dome and the lantern have zinc sheet metal cladding. There are separate, gable roofs over the western avant-corps containing the sacristy and over the front portico. The roof structures are made of wood.

The building is set on a high foundation crowned with a cornice. On the central axes of the front elevation, there is a four-column portico supported by Corinthian columns with grooved shafts. Other architectural details include a wide, smooth frieze with rosettes decorated with palmettes. The frieze is topped with a gutt strip and a profiled, corbelled cornice. Above, there is a triangular pediment delimited by a profiled cornice, also supported on corbels. In the middle of the smoothly plastered tympanum, there is an oculus. A smooth, wide strip of frieze with a corbelled cornice runs around all the elevations of the temple.

The seven-axial northern and southern walls are divided into three parts. The single extreme axes are positioned against the background of a fragment of a smoothly plastered wall, delimited by pilasters with smooth shafts and Corinthian capitals. The five central axes are positioned against the background of a wall covered with rusticated plasterwork. On the axes, there are high, rectangular, full-arched windows. In the central part of the western elevation, there is a three-axial avant-corps. Its corners are highlighted by Corinthian pilasters. Identical pilasters were placed between the axes. The extreme axes are accented by the high, rectangular, full-arched windows. In the central part, there is a rectangular, flat-headed door opening. It is placed in a profiled architectural frame ending with a full arch above the door.

The surface above the door, at the height of the second storey, is filled by a smooth, rectangular decorative panel, enclosed with a stuccoed, profiled frame.

Behind the chancel, there is a sacristy. The finial of the avant-corps, above the frieze and the corbelled cornice, has a similar design to that of the front elevation – a triangular pediment with a smooth tympanum and an oculus positioned centrally against the background of the tympanum.

The interior of the church is divided into three naves by Ionic columns supporting a two-storey interior gallery (triforium) placed along all the walls of the church. Above the altar, there is a pulpit in the interior gallery. On the first storey, the balustrade of the interior gallery is solid, smooth, topped with a prominent corbelled cornice, which also functions as the sill of the balustrade. Below, the balustrade is decorated with a wide batten with a floral decoration. The second storey of the interior gallery opens inside the temple with arcades topped with a full arch, with a baluster railing.

A dome rises over the central nave. The chancel is terminated by a straight wall.

The church may be visited upon prior arrangement and during church services.

Compiled by Agnieszka Lorenc - Karczewska, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Łódź. 21 March 2018

Bibliography

• Górny P.A., Łuczak R. S., Dzieje Ozorkowa na podstawie historii społeczności Ewangelicko-augsburskiej, 2009,