The building not intended for prison use was originally designed by the Polish architect Ferdynand Liebling (18771942) as a mixed-use courthouse-"cum"-taxation office for the town of Podgórze ("Ger.", Josefsstadt) and constructed in 1905 when the area was under Austrian occupation. The date of the establishment of prison facilities on the premises is unknown. Podgórze, originally a separate town, was incorporated into the municipality of Cracow by a decision of the Podgórze city council in 1915. Wartime records, including the memoirs of Tadeusz Pankiewicz, indicate that a court was still functional here in Nazi times of the Second World War, at least nominally (the prison being the chief feature), while communist-era press reports cite an operational circuit court together with the prison on the premises in post-War years, suggesting a conversion to an all-prison use in 1971 when the court ceased operations. The prison administration quarters housed in the post-War years an office of the District Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes (Okręgowa Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich, a defunct governmental body now subsumed within the IPN whose purview includes Communist in addition to Nazi crimes).