Ferber House

Brief Information

The Ferber House received its second name not from an owner, but from lost doors. They once depicted scenes of the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden; later these decorations were removed because of their supposedly demonic character. As a result, the name “House of Adam and Eve” now refers to a detail that is no longer on the building.

The house stands at 28 Długa Street in the center of Gdańsk. It was built in 1560 by Constantin Ferber I, the mayor and a member of the wealthy Ferber family. It is a Renaissance town house, but its present appearance should not be read as untouched antiquity: the building was badly damaged in 1945 and was rebuilt in 1951–1954. Today there is a souvenir shop inside.

What to Notice First

It makes sense to view the house as a facade where history is distributed across different levels. The five-story brick volume creates a vertical line, while the friezes between the windows divide it into bands. Most of these friezes are connected with natural themes, so the decorative inserts do more than simply fill the gaps: they make the facade rhythmic and readable from bottom to top.

The upper frieze is worth comparing with the others: instead of natural motifs, it contains the coats of arms of Poland, Royal Prussia, and Gdańsk. In this way, the upper part of the facade links the Ferbers’ private house with the city’s political environment. The doorway is important in a different way: the former scenes with Adam and Eve have disappeared, but precisely their absence explains the building’s second name. Another clue to the house’s mixed history is the reinforced-concrete ceiling, mentioned in the description alongside the brick Renaissance shell.