Description
Archbishop Mečislovas Reinys was born on 3 February 1884 into a farming family in the village of Madagaskaras, Daugailiai rural district, Utena County. His family home has survived here. The house, built in 1871–1872, has a characteristic layout of load-bearing walls. The wall openings and niches include rectangular window and door openings, semicircular dormer and upper gable windows, and triangular openings at the edges of the north and south gables (two additional windows added on the west façade in Soviet times are of no value). The architecture of the façades is traditional and vernacular, with an annex and porch on the east façade and a mezzanine on the west façade. Small canopy roofs on the façades separate the wall and gable planes. The finishing features board cladding: vertical up to the windowsills, horizontal between and above the windows, horizontal in the central part of the north and south gables, and diagonal at the corners. The windows are decorated with wooden surrounds. The mezzanine has characteristic wooden tongue-and-groove gable panels. The house stands on a stone foundation. The date “1930” appears in the small window of the mezzanine gable. Wooden board ceilings and floors predominate inside. The Archbishop's birthplace has 5 rooms, 2 kitchens and a storeroom, with 3 more rooms in the attic. The interior walls are plastered and wallpapered. In 1993, a memorial plaque was solemnly unveiled on the house with the inscription: “BIRTHPLACE OF ARCHBISHOP MEČISLOVAS REINYS, DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, 1884–1953”. Today the homestead is looked after and lived in by distant relatives of the archbishop.
