Inga Navickaitė-Drąsutė ‘Half Houses’

„Vilijampolė was established in 1652, when Janusz Radziwill invited foreign merchants and artisans to settle in Kėdainiai and Vilijampolė, which was being built at the time. In 1653, there were twenty-four houses in Vilijampolė. 1663, Slobada Wiliampolsa or Slabada, as Vilijampolė was known back then, was mentioned in official documents for the first time. The Slavic diminutive version of the name, Slabotkė (thought to be a derivative of Polish swoboda: “freedom”), is used in everyday language to this day.<...>
A number of land plots, newly formed during the land reform, werw assigned to landless peasants, workers, and civil servants. As a result, mostly one- and two-story houses were built here in the 1920s (that was also when the half houses first appeared in Vilijampolė).“

Julija Račiūnaitė