bg Vidin

Toma Lozanov House

- Ulitsa Tsar Alexander II 1 -
The three-story building was built in 1898 with commercial premises on the first floor and residential premises on the upper floors. The construction was executed according to a design that came from the hand of the Bulgarian architect for the Bulgarian merchant and industrialist, Toma Lozanov, who was born in 1854. He was the owner of a distillery and a modern sawmill that processed timber delivered from the Carpathians, which were standing next to each other on the banks of the Danube River. He also had a gunpowder factory built in the village of Bukovets. Part of the earned funds are invested in joint projects with another wealthy man from Vidin, .
Toma Lozanov
In 1909, a quarrel broke out between the two, which ended with the death of Jonov. Shocked by what happened, Lozanov decided to give away all his wealth for charitable purposes. In 1920, this building was donated for charitable purposes to the Diocesan Education and Charity Fund, and at the auction held later, it was bought by the Vidin Bulgarian Agricultural Bank. The building also housed the city post office for a while and on the first floor the confectionery named Savoy, which was furnished in style.
The building is visible in an old colorized postcard
The most distinctive feature of the building, which was built in the Neo-Renaissance style, is the majestic onion dome that contains multiple small dormers and is crowned with a that contains and a . The attic underneath the dome contains multiple dormers adorned with and a segmental , as well as four adorned with a . The that separates that attic from the rest of the building is embellished with loads of . The building is richly decorated with all sorts of either containing another cartouche, or an Ionic, Doric, or Corinthian . Either a segmental or a pointed pediment is placed above the second floor windows, of which the pointed ones are decorated with a cartouche. On the corner of the building, you can see two balconies, both of which are secured with a cast iron railing, and only one, which is the largest one, is supported by four .
An old postcard that shows the building on the left