Wadowice w aktach C.K. Starostwa w Białej. Budynek C.K. Sądu Obwodowego w Wadowicach

This article is the fourth instalment in the series Wadowice in the “Records of the Imperial-Royal Starosty in Biała,” published in the journal Wadoviana. The source base consists of records held in the State Archives in Katowice, Bielsko-Biała Branch (record group 13/689, District Starosty in Biała Krakowska). The files produced in the second half of the nineteenth century contain information on the history of Wadowice and its environs. This is all the more striking and unexpected given that the Biała District did not encompass Wadowice. However, under the regulations then in force, a Building Department operated within the Starosty in Biała, and its territorial remit also covered the Wadowice District. This was the reason why that district appears in the records left by the Imperial-Royal Starosty in Biała. In this part of the series the author focuses on the building of the Imperial-Royal District Court in Wadowice, erected in 1882. It soon became apparent that the building was too small for the needs of the institutions it was intended to house, and various options for its extension were therefore considered. One such option was the purchase of a property immediately adjacent to the court, owned by the lawyer Izydor Daniel. For this reason, in the early 1890s an official of the Imperial-Royal Starosty in Biała was dispatched to Wadowice to examine whether the purchase would be justified and cost-effective. Yet matters of this kind were not the only concern of the Biała Starosty. The office also had to take a position on issues as mundane as the costs of removing waste from the court’s cesspits.