Already at the end of 19th century, the town of Nowy Targ, which lasted for hundreds of years in a space and functions developed in the middle ages, opened itself to the world and started to catch up with the hitherto economic and cultural underdevelopment. Gradually, the activation of economic life, the launch of many municipal facilities and the initiating of a number of construction projects, which were often propped up with bravely incurred credits, began to yield tangible results in the situation and appearance of the town. As a result of this, the consciousness and the initiative of the town dwellers increased and the local intelligence started to play a more and more inspirational role.

A free of charge renunciation from municipal land to build a railway line between Chabówka and Zakopane (1898) and between Nowy Targ and Sucha Hora (1902) was, in spite of many objections, a decision of great significance. At that time railway was definitely a link with the world. A direct communication route with Cracow and Vienna had a positive impact on tourism, trade and town's development.

At the threshold of independence, Nowy Targ became the capital of the Podhale region - the town was a centre of economic, cultural, educational and political life of the whole region. The character of changes which gave birth to a modern town with origins of industry developing in the interwar period, with growing suburbs where the number of houses and inhabitants increased in times when tradition competed with progress, was captured by a photographer's eye. The main documentalist of the industrial investments taking place in the town was Edward Morawetz.

One of the most important undertakings was the town's power plant. The origins of this investment are associated with the purchase by the town's authorities in 1872 from Abraham Blumenfeld of a weir, water installations: a mill and a shield, as well asfarm buildings on the so called Młynówka.

The first innovative power plant used the power of water from the modernized Młynówka to produce electricity. The network providing the town with electricity was made already in 1897. In 1912 construction of a new power plant, designed by the engineer Kazimierz Cybulski,with modern appliances for the production of electricity started. The plant was launched in 1914, just before the outbreak of the war. (Photo No. 215, 216, 252) In 1931 Morawetz took photographs of the plant's inside, equipment and workers. (Photo No. 242, 245, 246)

In 1927 a modern, municipal steamsawmill was created ( Photos No. 248, 241) which was consecrated on 18 March by the priest Franciszek Karabuła. „Gazeta Podhalańska” in its 14th issue published a speech of the town mayor Józef Rajski, made during this ceremony: "This industrial establishment, build at the cost of the town next to the railway station, regardless of the fact that it will provide work for several dozen of worker families' bread-winners who need the job so much these days, will at least to some extend stop the process of mass exportation from the Podhale region of wood, a resource of low value, as it will provide us with high-quality material of English or French planks and logs for export. (..) The poor people of Podhale region, having no other way to earn money, cut down the trees, today fortunately only the thick one and not, as in the previous years, the thin ones for the production of paper, and deliver them to Nowy Targ to make some money to make ends meet. The need for a sawmill is confirmed by the enormous amount of wood laid here and waiting for processing, which in spite of launching the sawmill is not decreasing but increasing every day."