Pre-Soviet Manhole Covers in Lviv

Lviv has hundreds of Austrian- and Polish-era manhole covers covering various buried public utilities and services such as sewers, storm drains, water mains, electricity, telephone, hydrants, etc. These covers still prevent unauthorized access to the manholes; however, the companies that manufactured them, whose inscriptions are still visible, are defunct.

The large round manhole covers for access to the sewers date back to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the 1930s, first from the Austrian then Polish times. Most of the inscriptions are in Polish, with such words as kanalizacja (sewerage) and Lwow, and many Polish surnames. Some also include the names of factories, such as “Perkun Lwow. Społka komandy F. Pietzscha. Fabryka maszyn odlew zelaza” (Perkun Lwow. F. Pietzsch Company. Cast Iron Machine Factory).

There are still many of these in Lviv, but some of the inscriptions have worn off from the millions of feet that have walked over them; others are stolen for scrap metal.





Comments

  1. monikaApril 15, 2016 at 2:00 AM

    Hi, great blog :), and thx for manhole covers pics. "Perkun" was Ferdynand Pietzsch company, established in 1837 at Marcina 11 str. - castle quarter - he was my great granduncle :)
    all the best, monika pietsch

    ReplyDelete
  2. monikaApril 17, 2016 at 6:06 PM

    :), did you ever search Jagiellonian digital Library
    jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl, is great!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AretaApril 26, 2016 at 8:10 PM

      I have not. Thank you for the tip! I will check it out :)

      Delete

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