THE VICISSITUDES OF URBAN LIFE 239
The magnates were largely responsible for the planned development of the
city, most characteristically in their jurydyki or chartered wards exempted from
the Corporation's control. These wards were replicas in miniature of the mag-
nates' private towns in the country at large, and each contained their own and
separate administration. The earliest example was given by the Starosta, Jan
Grzybowski, who obtained a royal grant for the foundation of Grzybow in
- This was soon followed by Dziekanka (1617) and Zadzikowska (1638).
Nowe Leszno (1648) was the property of the Calvinist Leszczynskis, and a den
of dissident politics. Muranow was named after Sobieski's Venetian architect,
Belotti da Murano. Skaryszew (1648) on the right bank, belonging to the Bishop
of Plock, was the kernel of the suburb of Praga. Czerniakow to the south
belonged to Stanislaw Herakliusz Lubomirski (1642—1702), who founded there
a Benardine Monastery, an artificial lake, and the family Mausoleum.
Wielopole (1693) to the west was the work of the Crown Chancellor, Jan
Wielopolski (d. 1688); Tamka, Alexandria (1670), Kapitulna, Kaleczyn,
Bozydar (1702), and Ordynacka extended along the present-day Nowy Swiat.
The last of these, built by the Palatine of Podolia, Jan Jakub Zamoyski (d. 1790)
in 1739, was centred on the remodelled Gninski Palace (now the seat of the
Chopin Institute). Bielino (1757) was laid out by the Crown Marshal Franciszek
Bielinski (1683-1766) in the region of the present-day Marszalkowska St.
'Marienstadt' (1762) and 'Stanislawow' (1768) on the river bank of Powisle
beneath Nowy Swiat were the property of Stanislaw-August, who sold them to
the city Council in exchange for land adjoining Lazienki. The jurydyki reflected
the complete individuality of the magnates. Though condemned by the Sejm in
1764, they were not entirely abolished till 1791.
The districts of Joli Bord (later polonized to 'Zoliborz') and Praga developed
more spontaneously. The former, clustered round a Piarist convent and the
barracks of the Royal Guard, became the bourgeois suburb, sprinkled with the
villas and gardens of high officials. The latter expanded both to the south and to
the east. Saska Kepa (Saxon Islet) on the right-bank riverfront, an old Dutch peas-
ant settlement once known as 'Holendry', was graced by the summer pavilion of
August III, and attracted an increasing number of wealthy residents. Praga's east-
ern outskirts on the Radzymin Road were leased by Stanislaw-August to a Jewish
cattle merchant, Szmul Zbytkower. Their teeming streets, in effect the right-bank
ghetto, were universally known as the 'Szmulowizna'. Each of these new devel-
opments devoured large tracts of the City's agricultural land, which had fed the
population since medieval times and which lent the City a semi-rural air until the
end of the eighteenth century. Except for a makeshift pontoon, installed every
summer from 1776 onwards under the management of the infamous Adam
Poninski, the two halves of the city remained unjoined by any permanent bridge.
Attempts to contain the City behind fixed limits met with only partial success.
The earthworks of 1621-4 were inspired by news of the Turkish victory at
Cecora. Joining two points on the river bank north of the New Town and south
of the Carmelite Church in a wide arc, they reached as far inland as the Arsenal