Background
Józef Gosławski was born near Warsaw in Congress Poland to a noble Polish family.
Józef Gosławski was born near Warsaw in Congress Poland to a noble Polish family.
In 1891, he graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineering in Saint St. Petersburg, and a year later he was appointed chief architect of the city of Baku (present-day capital of Azerbaijan).
His first task was to assist the local architect Robert Marfeld in designing and supervising the construction of the largest church in the Caucasus, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral of Baku. Gosławski"s final creation was the City Duma (present-day Baku City Hall), whose both exterior and interior was designed by him. The construction of the building, which even today remains one of the major sights in Baku, cost 400,000 golden roubles.
However, Gosławski never lived to see the completion of the construction.
He died in Baku at the age of 38 of tuberculosis, several months before the opening of the Duma. On 30 August 2006, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev signed an act, affirming the placing of commemorative plate at Gosławski"s house in Baku, at 31 Mirza Ibrahimov Street.