When the town was founded about 1300 A.D. the plot located in the south west corner of the present crossroads of the Bracka street and Aleje Jerozolimskie belonged to Kałęczyn-Chmielnik and served to townspeople.

In the 15th and 16th century, in effect of princely, and later royal orders, some of the land was given to clergy and friars. In the end of the 17th century the subject plot became a possession of the Missionary Priests Congregation. In the north it edged the Żórawka river flowing from the Chmielno floodplains (the area of the present Starynkiewicza square) to the forge of the present Książęca street, and in the south it was adjacent to agricultural road in the line of the present Wspólna street. The region was crossed with a running road called "Na koniec Nowego Świata" (at the end of the New World), which connected the market of Grzybów jurydyka (administrative district established in 1650) with the Jazdów village (the area of the present Wiejska street).

Circa 1750 the Żórawka river was regulated - in the west of Nowy Świat it was turned into a jerozolimski channel and in the east, until its estuary to the Vistula river, it was channelized.

In 1770 the older road "Na koniec Nowego Świata" was officially named as Bracka street. Its name was a tribute to monastery brothers, Paulinians and Augustians, who owned the land with the crossing street those days. The whole area was attached to Warsaw based on Town Law (1791), which assumed a coherent area of the Warsaw agglomeration.

In the end of 18th century the street was developed with wooden houses and manors. In 1776-1782, at the crossroads of Bracka and Chmielna streets (in the area of the present department store - DT Braci Jabłkowskich) a cylindric, four storey wooden circus was raised - called Szczwalnia or Heca and it served as a "Colosseum" for wild animal fights.

In the years 1818-1823 Aleje Jerozolimskie street was designed and completed. Three driveways, four channels and six rows of poplars crossed the Bracka street.

At the same time an intense construction development started in the streets of Nowy Świat, Bracka, Żurawa, Chmielna and Aleje Jerozolimskie. Tenements began to emerge along the streets - starting with single houses, then groups of two-storey buildings and finally elegant, three storey apartment houses in the end of the 19th century.

Special attention should be paid to a tenement with an impressive royal facade, raised in 1834 in the south- west corner of the Bracka street and Aleje Jerozolimskie.

In the first half of the 19th century the Bracka street gained a new corner house, the brewery buildings and so called "barracks of the Jerozolimskie Way."

In the end of the 19th century there was another boom in the construction works. Aleje Jerozolimskie with its cross-cuts, in the section between the Marszałkowska street and Nowy Świat, was developed with elegant apartment houses, mainly three-storey high. Circa 1875 a part of the house in the south-west corner of Bracka street and Aleje Jerozolimskie (raised in 1834) was rebuilt from the Bracka street into a two-storey apartment house with a palace-like facade.

In the years 1882-1883 in the north-east corner of Aleje Jerozolimskie ad Bracka street an eclectic, four-storey apartment house was raised and it was embellished with a quadrangular helmet at the top corner.

In the years 1886-1890 in the proximity of Bracka street a number of municipal investments were completed. The sewage system and water supply system was built. In 1895 in the section between Marszałkowska and Nowy Świat a horsecar line was built.

In the years 1903-1910 both corners of the Bracka and Nowogrodzka crossroads were developed with big, four-storey apartment houses. In the south-west corner of the street, circa 1903 a five-storey, art-nouveau eclectic building was raised for an Insurance Society "Zgoda".

On 23 May 1908 the first electric tram started to operate in the Aleje Jerozolimskie street and its route was from Rogatki Mokotowskie (now the Unii Lubelskiej square) to the Stalowa street. Tram lines were also put in the bridge of Prince Józef Poniatowski. They connected the centre of the city with Praga and Grochów, but the first trams moved here only in August 1925, when the bridge was finally rebuilt after the destruction during the first world war.

In the years 1921-1932, in the framework of modernization of the Warsaw Railway Grid, under Aleje Jerozolimskie a railway tunnel was built to connect the new Main Station (1930-1939) and the Eastern Station. In 1931 in the corner of Nowy Świat and Aleje Jerozolimskie a monumental building of Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego was open to its clients.

In the period between the two world wars the Bracka street was commercial in the whole length. The ground floors of all houses were occupied by shops and stores of the top Warsaw companies. The best known stores were in the section between Aleje Jerozolimskie and the Chmielna street. This is the place where the Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store was located, the first modern department store in the town.

In the effect of bombing in the area of the Main Station in September 1939 two houses in Bracka street were destroyed - in its western part, on the northern side of Aleje Jerozolimskie.

During the Warsaw Upraising (1 August - 2 October 1944) the area of the crossroads at Bracka street and Aleje Jerozolimskie became the arena of vigorous battles of the groups of major "Sarna" for a maintenance of the connection between the "North" and "South" centres. It was made at night from 7th and 8th August through Aleje Jerozolimskie, running in a shallow trench with barricades. The passage was located to the west of the crossroads with the Krucza street (between houses 17 and 22). It was under the German gunfire, among others from the building of Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.

Direct fighting and shooting at the insurgents positions caused partial destruction of houses at Aleje Jerozolimskie in the section between Marszałkowska street and Nowy Świat, including the corners of Bracka street. The BGK building was damaged more seriously.

After the capitulation of the Upraising the civilians were expelled from the town and grouped in a temporary camp in Pruszków. Some of them were sent to unfree labour to Germany, others were sent to kieleckie and krakowskie voivodship, where they were released from trains in left alone in unknown places. In October 1944 the Germans burnt the buildings, which remained standing after the fights.

On 17 January 1945 the First Polish Army occupied the town on the left river bank in the framework of the Warsaw Operation conducted by Soviet armies and the First Belarus Front.

The Council of Ministers Decree of 26 October 1945 on taking over land in the area of the capital city of Warsaw allowed more freedom for the Office of Capital Reconstruction. It was supposed to complete the plans of a development of a new, socialist Warsaw, among others, by destroying the "relics of capitalism".

In 1946 trolleybus communication was opened in the town. It was based on a dozen or so overused trolleybuses given to the town by Moscow. The first trolleybus line wan through the Bracka street (it connected the Unia Lubelska square with the Theatre Square).

In 1948 the Krucza street was extended to the north, over the line of Aleje Jerozolimskie, to connect with Bracka street. Therefore the remaining classicist apartment house was disassembled in the south corner of Bracka and Widok streets. Demolishing the Jabłkowski Brothers Department Store, which was on the line of the extended street, was postponed, thanks to which the building remained untouched until today.

In the 50s of the 20th century a functional building of the Central Department Store (now the "Smyk" store), the Orbis office building with the specific neon in the form of a globe, placed in the building corner, and an office building, where the General Office of Controlling Press, Publications and Exhibitions. The last two objects were built in the spirit of socialist realism.

Circa 1950 the driveway of the Bracka street in the section from Aleje Jerozolimskie to the former crossing with the Widok street was replaced with a sidewalk.

In the beginning of the 70s of the 20th century the course of the Bracka street, so far crossing the square, was changed and directed perpendicularly to Aleje Jerozolimskie, along the BGK facade. Aboveground parking was organized on the remaining area.

Compiled by: Fryderyk Szymański, APA Kuryłowicz & Associates

In October 2011 the Wolf Bracka department store was open. Its tasteful architecture perfectly suits the vicinity and the scale of this part of the centre. Elegant finishing of the interiors reflect the luxurious goods and services presented here. This is a place, where you can feel the spirit of a great metropolis. Wolf Bracka department store reinvigorated the merchant traditions of pre-war capital.