The Ippen Villa (the Institute of National Remembrance)

The villa at 14 Piotra Skargi Street was established in 1927 for, Hermann Otto Ippen, a ship-owner. Its designer was Gustav Gauss, who designed it in a neo-baroque style with impressive ending of facades. Unfortunately, the project has not been completed because the owner decided to simplify some of the construction, just after the foundations having been built. He submitted to the building supervision services a new idea of ​​building the facility, and thus the present form is characterised by a high resistance wall and modernist form of the building with neo-baroque elements. The town took over the building from the ship-owner in the mid-30s and the assets were entrusted to General von Blaskowitzow as an official residence. He officiated there until the end of World War II. A few years later (the early 1950s), the villa began to serve the Soviet consulate, and then - the consulate of the Russian Federation until 1998. After its shutdown, the North-Western Regional Branch of Powszechny Bank Kredytowy used to operate there. Immediately after new tenants moved in, the villa was given a major overhaul. Currently, since 2009, it has been the seat of: the Departmental Public Education Office of the Szczecin branch of the Institute of National Remembrance and the Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes Against the Polish Nation. The Ippen Villa is one of the youngest villas built in the former Szczecin district of Westend. The property was inscribed on the list of immovable monuments. The founder of the company, which bought the land for a new district was Johannes Quistorp, who run business together with his son and a friend Augustus Horn. Piotra Skargi Street administratively belonged to those lands. Today, former Westend is said to have been a luxury housing estate for rich entrepreneurs.