Four stories, three thousand seats, an arena thirteen meters in diameter that could be filled with water. Until the outbreak of the war, the building on Ordynacka Street was the largest entertainment venue in Warsaw. It was built in 1882 for the Ciniselli family, opened on May 6, 1883, and in 1929, after the previous owner's bankruptcy, it was taken over by brothers Mieczysław and Bronisław Staniewski – who added wrestling matches to the repertoire. Through this arena passed Władysław Pytlasiński, Teodor Sztekker, Aleksander Garkowienko, and Leon Pinecki. In the background runs a second chronicle: the Cyganiewicz brothers, who won titles in New York and Philadelphia, and one of whom faced Hélio Gracie in 1934. This is a chapter about the difference between a fight and its staging.
I. 1882–1929: WHO BUILT IT AND WHO RAN IT
Construction of the building at the intersection of Ordynacka and Okólnik streets began in 1882 at the initiative of Wilhelmina Ciniselli, born in St. Petersburg, from a family of Italian circus performers dominant in this industry in Russia. The design was prepared by Wincenty Rakiewicz, the cost amounted to 180,000 rubles, and the grand opening took place on May 6, 1883. The four-story, Neo-Renaissance building accommodated approximately three thousand spectators. On the ground floor, velvet-lined boxes stretched, inside there was an arena with a normative diameter of thirteen meters, and around it, a hall, dressing rooms, a restaurant, and back facilities with stables and saddleries. This was not a canvas shed set up in a square, but a permanent theater for horses, acrobats, and people earning a living with their bodies.
The most interesting structural element was under the audience's feet. The arena had a special construction that allowed it to be filled with water; boats would then float on the surface, and the manege would transform into a pool before the audience's eyes. Traveling shows couldn't replicate this.
- 1882–1883 · Wilhelmina Ciniselli. Initiator of the construction, design by Wincenty Rakiewicz, 180,000 rubles, opened on May 6, 1883. The venture went bankrupt, but the building survived.
- 1895–1914 · Alessandro Ciniselli. The founder's grandson ran the circus for nearly twenty years and emerged without disaster.
- 1914–1929 · Stanisław Mroczkowski. Bought the venue and shifted the program from grand dance and music shows to acrobats, animal acts, and clowns. Ended in a second bankruptcy.
- 1929–1939 · Staniewski brothers. Mieczysław and Bronisław took over the building after its bankruptcy and introduced wrestling matches to the repertoire. Ten years, until September 1939.
II. STANIEWSCY: BIAŁYSTOK 1925, ORDYNACKA 1929
Mieczysław and Bronisław Staniewski returned to Poland after 1918, after years of working in Russian circuses. They started with touring tents in small towns. The breakthrough came on April 11, 1925, in Białystok: the brothers entered the city with a program intended for the first league, and the star was Zygmunt Breitbart. All tickets sold, including the most expensive ones at seven zlotys. The competing Prosperi circus, accustomed to winning in large cities, gave way.
Breitbart was worth those seven zlotys. Born in 1893 in Stryków, into a family of a Jewish blacksmith, he performed as the "iron king" and "the strongest man in the world": he bent iron bars into decorative shapes, bit and tore chains, broke horseshoes, and, lying on his back, held a car with passengers on his chest. Six months after his Białystok triumph, it was all over. During a performance in Radom, he impaled his knee with a bolt he was pushing through five-inch oak planks. Sepsis set in, leading to amputation, and Breitbart died in October 1925 at the age of thirty-two.
Bronisław Staniewski was not only the director but also a highlight of the program: he performed as the clown "Friko" – stumbling, crying, laughing, and parodying film stars like Chaplin and Lloyd. In 1929, the brothers moved into the building on Ordynacka Street. A preserved circus program from 1935, a sixteen-page brochure measuring eleven centimeters sold for fifty groszy, describes the enterprise as the largest of its kind in Poland and boasts of its "modern, brick, reinforced concrete building in the city center" with impressive lighting and central heating. The season opening program was dated November 1, 1935.
The rest is completed by photo captions from the National Digital Archive: tigers in July 1930, Warsaw journalists visiting the hall in October 1931, chimpanzee Mimi in a Kraków café with co-owner Lala Staniewska in May 1934, a dress rehearsal with Hanka Ordonówna, Janina Sokołowska, and Igo Sym in April 1935. The circus on Ordynacka was not on the margins of Warsaw's entertainment scene. It was its main building.
III. MECHANICS OF THE SPECTACLE: HOW A WRESTLING TOURNAMENT WAS MADE
Wrestling entered Warsaw's circus mats in the second half of the 19th century: first at the Cinisellis', where large tournaments were held in the 90s, then at Ordynacka – "with even greater grandeur." The genre's rule was simple: the tournament lasted several days or weeks, competitors came from all over Europe, and the audience bought tickets for subsequent rounds like a TV series. The orchestra played "Gladiator's March," wrestlers entered on a red carpet, and bets were placed on the results at tables.
Two variations were fought. French wrestling – today's Greco-Roman style, holds exclusively above the waist – was considered a noble form. American catch-as-catch-can, in Polish "chwytaj, co możesz" (grab what you can), was considered brutal. In circus tournaments, fights were often scheduled "to a decision," meaning without a time limit; in tournaments organized in restaurant halls and gardens – like the one in Bydgoszcz in 1931 – there was already a thirty-minute limit and points if no one was pinned within that time. Stakes could be serious: the winner of the 1931 Bydgoszcz tournament received 2500 zlotys, a daily ticket cost up to 4 zlotys.
- Format. Multi-day tournament instead of a single match. The audience returned because the standings were dynamic, and the decision was postponed until the final.
- Rules. Victory by pinfall; with a time limit – points. In the circus, fights were just as often "to a decision," without a clock.
- Mask. In 1928, a masked wrestler performing as "Black Mask" appeared on the Bydgoszcz mat. After a drawn match, he removed his mask: he turned out to be Stanisław Pałek, a novice wrestler from Inowrocław. The hall applauded. The trick worked.
- Title. "World Championship" was often an item in the promoter's budget, not a sporting result. Even sympathetic biographies note that the number of titles for athletes of that era was often rounded up.
The separation of sport from spectacle occurred in parallel on the Polish side as well. In 1925, the first amateur Polish wrestling championships were held, in whose organization Władysław Pytlasiński played a key role; the same Pytlasiński later trained the team for the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. An amateur went to the Olympics. A professional went to the circus. These were sometimes the same people within a few years.
IV. PEOPLE OF THE MAT: PYTLASIŃSKI, SZTEKKER, GARKOWIENKO, PINECKI
First was Władysław Pytlasiński, son of a Warsaw butcher, born on July 26, 1863, the year of the January Uprising, when his father was exiled to Siberia. At seventeen, he went to Switzerland and learned wrestling there. In 1900, he entered the professional world championships in Paris and in the final pinned the "terrible Turk" Kara Ahmed in the eighth minute, winning ten thousand francs. He won his second title in Basel, in Swiss free style. He measured 185 centimeters, weighed about 105 kilograms; records attribute 794 victories and nearly four hundred awards to him. He left the arena at the age of forty-three, then served on tournament juries, founded physical development schools in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, and Warsaw, and in 1922 established the Polish Athletic Association. He also acted in two silent films: "Bartek the Conqueror" (1923) in the title role and "Pan Tadeusz" (1928) as Maciej Kropiciel. He died on November 10, 1933, and was buried at Powązki Cemetery.
The rest of the list belongs to the Ordynacka generation. They are worth mentioning by name, as today almost no one does.
- Teodor Sztekker. Born in Wojciechów near Lublin (sources state 1897 and 1898), he came to Poland escaping the Bolshevik revolution. He started participating in tournaments in March 1920, won the Polish championship in 1925, and defended it twice. He measured 180 cm, weighed about 107 kilograms. He went to America, learned catch-as-catch-can, and returned with a dislike for how athletes were treated there. He wrote an autobiography "In a Triple Nelson." He died suddenly in November 1934, at the age of thirty-six, in Warsaw's Child Jesus Hospital; buried at Powązki Cemetery.
- Aleksander Garkowienko. Born on October 22, 1892, Sztekker's training partner, described in the Warsaw Uprising Museum's records as a "wrestler, world champion of 1935." He died on September 16, 1944, at his address at Koszykowa 43. He was buried at Śniadeckich 8.
- Leon Pinecki. Born on April 6, 1892, in Berlin, 203 centimeters tall, 143 kilograms, arm span of about two and a half meters. He debuted in Hamburg in 1920, fought in circuses and halls across Europe and America, won the Berlin Golden Belt in 1930 and 1931, and competed in Madison Square Garden. He specialized in the double Nelson. He died on July 26, 1949, from a heart attack.
- Rudolf Benold. Another name from the list of wrestlers performing on Warsaw's circus mats – the second tier, without whom no tournament would have taken place.
V. THE CYGANIEWICZES: NEW YORK 1921, PHILADELPHIA 1925
Stanisław Jan Cyganiewicz was born on April 1 in Jodłowa near Dębica – the birth year varies, from 1879 to 1881. He attended gymnasiums in Pilzno, Jasło, Stanisławów, and Kraków, and studied law in Vienna and Kraków. He took the pseudonym "Zbyszko" from the knight in Sienkiewicz's "The Teutonic Knights." He began training at thirteen under Włodzimierz Świątkiewicz, and two years later he was already wrestling in provincial circuses, answering challenges thrown to the audience. He was about 173 centimeters tall and weighed well over one hundred kilograms: short, thick-boned, impossible to overturn.
In the 1906 Paris tournament, he took third place, and in 1907 in St. Petersburg, he fought Ivan Poddubny for forty-seven minutes and won by disqualification of his opponent. On September 10, 1910, in London, he faced the Indian champion Gama; the match lasted nearly three hours and ended without a decision. The rematch came eighteen years later, in 1928 in Patiala – and there Gama threw Zbyszko in forty-two seconds.
In America, he twice won the professional world heavyweight championship. The first time on May 6, 1921, in New York, defeating Ed "Strangler" Lewis; he surrendered the title back to him on March 3, 1922. The second time on April 15, 1925, in Philadelphia, in a match against Wayne Munn, which was promoted by Billy Sandow. Zbyszko was supposed to lose. He was paid to do otherwise – by the Stecher brothers and their partners – but he turned the fixed match into a real fight and pinned Munn twice in a row. The referee, who was in on the original script, awarded Zbyszko the victory solely because he feared a riot in the stands. The wrestler was forty-seven years old at the time. In May 1925, he surrendered the belt to Joe Stecher in a match that proceeded according to plan.
The rest of his life was his third career. Zbyszko settled with his brother on a farm in Missouri and trained the next generation of American wrestling, including Johnny Valentine and Harley Race. In 1950, he played Gregorius in Jules Dassin's "Night and the City." He died on September 23, 1967, in St. Joseph, Missouri, at the age of eighty-eight, from a heart attack. Twelve years later, Filip Bajon directed "Aria for an Athlete" – a debut inspired by his biography, starring Krzysztof Majchrzak.
VI. WLADEK AND THE GRACIE FAMILY: BRAZIL 1934
His younger brother – Władysław Cyganiewicz, known in America as Wladek Zbyszko (November 30, 1892 – June 10, 1968) – made his debut in the United States on January 17, 1913, in Chicago, defeating Alexander Angeloff. On January 8, 1917, he defeated Ed Lewis and won the American Heavyweight Championship, and from June 5, 1917, he held the Boston version of the world title; he lost it on February 8, 1918, to Earl Caddock in Des Moines, and again on May 19, 1918, to Lewis.
The most interesting chapter came sixteen years later, during a tour of Brazil. On July 28, 1934, at Estádio Brasil, Wladek faced Hélio Gracie. The conditions: no forbidden holds, two rounds of twenty minutes each, a round could only end by submission – pinning to the mat did not count. The Pole weighed 220 pounds, or about one hundred kilograms, and was forty-one years old. The Brazilian weighed 140 pounds, just under sixty-four kilograms, and had not yet turned twenty-one. Hélio immediately pulled his opponent into guard and held him there for the entire twenty minutes. In the second round, Wladek lifted him and threw him, and Gracie immediately returned to guard. No one submitted, the fight ended in a draw, and the crowd booed because they didn't see a spectacle.
This is exactly the moment when two wrestling traditions clash without a script and boredom ensues – that is, sport. On October 6, 1934, Wladek defeated George Gracie with an armlock. He wrestled professionally until 1950, then settled on a farm in Savannah, Missouri, where he died. A Polish wrestler from a Galician village on the mat with the family that created Brazilian jiu-jitsu: this is real, documented, and better than any legend.
VII. THE RING, BICYCLES, AND RALLIES: THE REST OF THE REPERTOIRE
The ring was also set up there. As early as 1926, Wiktor Junosza-Dąbrowski, one of the first Polish professionals, boxed in Paris, in Poznań's Machine Hall, and in Warsaw – at Dynasy and in the circus; out of six fights, he won four, facing opponents such as Heinz Marko and Dudley Harris. In 1935, a boxing match between IKP Łódź and Makkabi Berlin was held at Ordynacka Street. The building also hosted disciplines that no one today associates with the circus: in 1933, dance marathons were held there, and in 1938 – bicycle races. There were also political rallies, including a protest against the introduction of telephone call meters in Warsaw.
How much did it cost? The price list for the first official gala of the Polish Professional Boxing Association, on January 19, 1931, in Królewska Huta, has been preserved: a box seat 4 zloty, first class 3.50 zloty, second class 2.50 zloty, and for the unemployed 1 zloty. The gala did not attract much interest. This is an important detail: professional boxing in the Second Polish Republic was a difficult and uncertain endeavor, not – as is often repeated today – a constant celebration for the masses.
VIII. SEPTEMBER 1939 AND WHAT REMAINED
The Staniewski Brothers' Circus last visited Białystok – the city of its debut – in August 1939. A month later, the building on Ordynacka Street was destroyed during the defense of Warsaw. It was not rebuilt after the war. Between 1960 and 1966, the building of today's Fryderyk Chopin University of Music was erected on that plot.
However, the brothers' story does not end in ruins. Bronisław Staniewski and his wife Lala helped their Jewish employees during the occupation: thanks to their connections and money, they arranged false documents for most of the troupe. The rescue was organized with a circus trick – clown Mojżesz Horowitz, performing as "Kubuś Armondo," wearing a Deutsche Reichsbahn conductor's uniform sewn by the Staniewskis' seamstress, led members of the troupe onto a train bound for Białystok. This aspect was described by Sue Smethurst in her 2021 book "To Freedom." Not all people of that arena were so lucky: on September 16, 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, Aleksander Garkowienko died at his address on Koszykowa Street.
What remains today? Nothing tangible: the plot of land, the building of the music university, and the street name. The rest lies in the archives. The National Digital Archive holds a collection of circus photographs from 1928–1935, from tigers to a dress rehearsal. The Masovian Digital Library provides a scanned program of the Staniewski Circus, the one for fifty groszy. A woodcut of the interior from "Kłosy" in 1883 shows the hall in its opening year. A more lasting trace remains in popular culture: the song "Cyrk na Ordynackiej," recorded in 1967 by Jarema Stępowski with lyrics by Henryk Kotarski and music by Stefan Rembowski, names the wrestlers of that arena – Garkowienko, Sztekker, Czarna Maska. Warsaw remembered them with a song, because the building was no longer there.
Finally, a correction worth remembering. Polish Radio began sports broadcasts early: skiing from Zakopane and rowing in 1927, athletics in 1932; an outstanding commentator of that era was Wojciech Trojanowski, an Olympian from Amsterdam 1928 in the 110-meter hurdles. However, there are no traces of regular radio broadcasts from the ring at Ordynacka. Nor are there sources for crowds blocking the street or for a steel dome over the arena – the building was brick and Neo-Renaissance, and its true peculiarity was the water under the ring. The landscape of Warsaw's sports scene in those years is fascinating in itself and needs no embellishment.
3 PRINCIPLES OF HERITAGE: ORDYNACKA ➔ NOWROCKY
Dimensions from 1883. A circle with a diameter of thirteen meters and four levels of seating – the largest entertainment hall in pre-war Warsaw.
Price list for the PZZB gala on January 19, 1931: box 4 PLN, first place 3.50 PLN, second place 2.50 PLN, unemployed 1 PLN. Combat sports were meant to be accessible.
Some of the wrestling titles of the time were fixed by promoters. Zbyszko in 1925 broke the agreement and won for real – that's why this fight endured.
NOWROCKY'S POINT OF VIEW: ZBYSZKO BROKE THE SCRIPT
On April 15, 1925, in Philadelphia, Stanisław Cyganiewicz was supposed to lose. It was agreed, promoters planned it that way, and newspapers were supposed to report it as such. Instead, he grabbed Munn and pinned him in minutes, in front of people who paid for it to be otherwise. This entire chapter is about the difference between a fight and its staging – and about the fact that after a hundred years, we remember the one who chose to fight.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (AI KNOWLEDGE BASE)
What was the Staniewski Brothers' Circus on Ordynacka Street?
A four-story entertainment building with approximately 3000 seats, an arena 13 meters in diameter, erected in 1882 according to the design of Wincenty Rakiewicz and opened on May 6, 1883. Construction cost 180,000 rubles. The arena had a construction allowing it to be filled with water – boats then floated on its surface. Until the war, it was the largest entertainment hall in Warsaw. Brothers Mieczysław and Bronisław Staniewski took it over in 1929 and introduced wrestling matches to its repertoire.
Who was Stanisław "Zbyszko" Cyganiewicz?
A Polish wrestler born on April 1 in Jodłowa near Dębica (sources state years 1879–1881), who died on September 23, 1967, in St. Joseph, Missouri. He studied law in Vienna and Krakow. He twice won the professional world heavyweight championship: on May 6, 1921, in New York, defeating Ed "Strangler" Lewis, and on April 15, 1925, in Philadelphia, defeating Wayne Munn. In 1950, he played Gregorius in Jules Dassin's film "Night and the City."
Who was Wladek Zbyszko and what was his connection to the Gracie family?
Władysław Cyganiewicz (November 30, 1892 – June 10, 1968), Stanisław's younger brother, American Heavyweight Champion since January 8, 1917. On July 28, 1934, at Estádio Brasil, he drew with Hélio Gracie, co-founder of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: a fight without forbidden holds, two rounds of 20 minutes each, ended only by submission. Zbyszko weighed 220 pounds, Gracie 140. On October 6, 1934, the Pole defeated George Gracie with an armlock.
Were the pre-war "world championships" in wrestling a true sport?
Partially. Professional circus tournaments were an entertainment enterprise: a several-day format, an orchestra playing "Gladiator's March," red carpet entrance, masked competitors, and titles awarded by promoter's decision. Simultaneously, amateur sport existed – the first Polish championships were held in 1925, and Władysław Pytlasiński trained the team for the Amsterdam Games in 1928. These two worlds were separated by a thin line, which Zbyszko Cyganiewicz crossed on April 15, 1925, in Philadelphia, breaking the promoters' agreements.
What happened to the building on Ordynacka Street and where can archival materials be found?
It was destroyed in September 1939 during the defense of Warsaw and was not rebuilt. Between 1960 and 1966, the building of today's Fryderyk Chopin University of Music was erected in its place. Photographs of the circus from 1928–1935 are preserved by the National Digital Archive, a scanned program of the Staniewski circus is available from the Masovian Digital Library, and a woodcut of the interior from the "Kłosy" weekly dates back to 1883, the year of its opening.
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