ZMAJ JOVINA 28
This one-story house, known as the house “by the white lion”, was built at the beginning of the 18th century, and was first mentioned in 1720, in the Baroque style, and as it was partially damaged in Buna, it took on some classicist features during the renovation. It is considered that this is the oldest house in Novi Sad.
The construction method is very similar to the military houses in the Petrovaradin suburb.
The first owner of this house mentioned in archival sources was the soap maker Stojan Maslak. In accordance with the customs of the time, he gave the house the name “At the White Lion”.
The house was bought from him by Emanuel Janković, a bookseller and printer, who opened the first printing house in the city in 1790.
This is the oldest photo of Zmaj Jovina 28, taken during the great flood in 1876. In 1876, the family of Karlovac Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović, from Kulpin, came into possession of the house.
In the 1880s photo, the only significant change is the street lamp mounted on the wall of this house.
In the photo taken around 1905, we see Milan Ivković’s bookshop on the corner with a modern wooden portal.
In this photo from the same period, the details on the facade of the house as well as the board with the inscription “Knjižara Ivković Milan” can be seen even better.
In this color photo taken around 1912, we see the electricity pole at the corner of the house (installed in 1910) as well as the tram, which was introduced at the end of 1911.
This house was bought in 1910 by landowner and wholesaler Lazar Dunđerski. He was its owner until 1940, when it was bought by Samuilo Kertes, the director of the bank, Kornal Frank, his brother-in-law, an industrialist, and Hirschenhauser, a merchant.
The base of this one-story house is in the shape of an irregular Cyrillic letter “P”, with one street facade towards Dunavska and the other towards Zmaj Jovina street, where we find a slight break in the facade, because the house’s foundation and overall body are adapted to the old street matrix. The vehicular entrance from Zmaj Jovina street leads to the yard of the house, the construction and design of which is particularly striking – the shallow segment of the arch at the base is reinforced with traditional stone bumpers.
The facade from Zmaj Jovina street on the ground floor has a centrally placed car entrance formed by profiled stone blocks, and on the left and right side of the entrance are two narrow rectangular openings of shops, portals and shop windows, with a shallow rectangular plaster frame.
On this facade, on the first floor, there are five double-hung windows in a simple plaster frame, bound on the lower side with a solbank, and above each window we find architraved pediments on slender decorated consoles.
On the facade from Dunavska Street, there are seven vertical openings, with narrow rectangular openings of shops on the ground floor, as portals and shop windows, in a shallow rectangular plaster frame, and on the first floor with double-hung windows. These seven double-winged windows in a simple plaster frame are tied with solbank on the lower side, and above each window we find architraved pediments on slender decorated consoles.
The ground floor and basement are under semi-shaped, spherical and trough vaults.
The courtyard side of the facade is dominated by a roofed communication balcony, connected at the end of the wing by a bridge. The yard is small and narrow, connected by a gate to the yard of the neighboring house in Dunavska street.
A rare architectural element of this house is the well on the wheel located in the left wall of the carriage passage.
The roof of the street wings of the house is on two pitches, and the courtyard one is on one pitch, and is covered with pepper tiles. The construction of the roof belongs to the time after the Buna, with a low ridge and a smaller roof surface, while the original roof was probably similar to the roof of the house at Zmaj Jovina 25a.
The realisation of this site was supported by the Administration for Culture of the City of Novi Sad
The sources and materials of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Novi Sad were used for the realization of this website
The Old Core of Novi Sad was declared a cultural asset, by the decision on establishing it as a spatial cultural-historical unit – 05 no. 633-151/2008 of January 17, 2008, “Sl. gazette of the Republic of Serbia” no. 07/2008.
