House Whitehead
address: 7 Dolac StreetPeriod: Historicism
Kind: Immovable material heritage
Century: 19
Year: 1886
Purpose: residental business
The house Whitehead was built in 1886 according to the project by Giacomo Zammatti, an Italian architect who worked in Rijeka from 1884.
The house was built for a famous English industrial and ship engineer Robert Whitehead. After opening the company Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume for the production of engines and ships, Whitehead spent the major part of his life in Rijeka. By perfecting the prototype of the devastating firearm according to the idea by the retired officer Ivan Luppis, he made the first functional prototype of the torpedo.
This is a historicistic residential building, made as a part of the new Clotilda Inferiore Street (today Dolac Street), which was cut through at the beginning of the 1880s for the purposes of new urbanistic plans for the centre of Rijeka. As it was fitted into the row, it is open towards the street only with its façade.
The building façade was built with a combination red brick and stone, representing a blend of Romanesque and Gothic style in architecture of north Italian origin, which can be seen in some elements like the two-light mullioned windows, cornices of the blind arcades, balcony stone fence, animal consoles and gargoyles, as well as wrought iron chandeliers and the rib-groin vault of the loggia in the interior. The central, narrow part of the façade is a bit indented and emphasized by three balcony openings in the form of a three-light mullioned windows, placed one above the other. The internal rooms are divided into residential and business rooms.
Owing to its decoration and the specific features of the façade, the house Whitehead was often called Casa Veneziana. Whitehead financed numerous other constructions in Rijeka, the most famous being the Villa Whitehead in 1878, erected in the vicinity of the torpedo plant.
Valorization:
The house Whitehead is included in the Republic of Croatia Register of Cultural Goods as an individual immobile cultural good.
Bibliography:
Andrijašević, Mihovil, Arhitektura XIX. stoljeća u Rijeci: djelatnost arhitekta Giacoma Zammattija, Master's thesis, Zagreb, 1997.
Ambrosi, Roberto, L'attivita del architetto Giacomo Zammattio a Fiume (1883 − 1990), Fiume, Nuova serie, vol. 4, 1982, pp. 70−91.
Arhitektura historicizma u Rijeci: 1845. – 1900.: arhitektura i urbanizam, ed. Daina Glavoičić, MMSU, Rijeka, 2002.
Grubić, Ana, Giacomo Zammattio u Rijeci, Diploma paper, Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies in Rijeka, 2002.
Lukežić, Irvin, Robert Whitehead, engleski tvorničar torpeda iz Rijeke, Izdavački centar Rijeka, Rijeka, 2010.
Matejčić, Radmila, Razvoj arhitekture 19. stoljeća u Rijeci, Dometi, vol. 4−5, 1985, pp. 45−52.
Toncinich, Erna, Giacomo Zammattio u Rijeci, Dometi, vol. 5−6, 1993, pp. 43−46.
Toncinich, Erna, Zammattio, l'architetto dell' edificio scolastico. Tra storia e ricordi: 110 anni di vita scolastica, Italian High School, Rijeka, 8−14, 1999.
Zammattio Maria and Nezi, Antonio, L'architetto Giacomo Zammattio, Bergamo, 1931.
