Służewiec

Służewiec is a neighbourhood, and an area of the City Information System, in the city of Warsaw, Poland, located within the district of Mokotów. Most of the neighbourhood consists of office buildings, which form one of the biggest complexes of office buildings in Poland, and one of the most important office centres in the city. It contains many headquarters of branches of many domestic and multinational corporations. A small portion of the neighbourhood also forms a residential area with apartment buildings. The name of Służewiec was first attested in documentation in 1378, and it functioned as a small village until 1938, when it was incorporated into the city of Warsaw. It was mostly destroyed in 1944, during the Second World War, and initially re-developed as a major industrial district, known as Służewiec Przemysłowy (Industrial Służewiec), in the 1950s. In the 1990s, the industry had stopped being present in the area, with the neighbourhood developing into an office centre, becoming one of the biggest of this kind, both in the city, and in Poland. The southern portion of Służewiec is part of the municipal neighbourhood of Służewiec Południowy (South Służewiec), governed by the neighbourhood council. The name Służewiec, comes from the name of the nearby neighbourhood of Służew, which historically was known as Służewo. Its name comes from archaic Polish word służ, which is equivalent to modern służyć, and means to serve. The name came from the fact, that historically, the area was inhabited by serfs, peasants who served to the local noble families. While the area was under the control of the Russian Empire, which lasted from 1815 to 1915, the Russian name for the settlement was Служевечъ (transcription: Sluzhevech). Between 1915 and 1918, while the area was under the control of the German Empire, its German name was Sluschewec. Most of the buildings of Służewiec are offices, with the neighbourhood containing one of the biggest complexes of office buildings in Poland, with 83 office buildings within its boundaries in 2019.