Open Air Museum of Wooden Architecture - The Museum of
Architecture located in Lodz is part of the Textile Museum.
The idea of creating an open-air museum of wooden architecture
belongs to Kristina Kondratikova, the first director and founder of
the Central Textile Museum. The authors of the architectural concept
of the museum are the designers from Wroclaw - Anita Luniak and
Teresa Mromlinska, who in 2002 won an architectural competition for
the construction of this museum. In 2002, however, construction
never began. Funding was not enough, it took four years to collect
the necessary funds. The investment was worth about PLN 32 million,
more than half of this amount came from the European Regional
Development Fund. The construction of the museum was carried out
from September 2006 to May 2008. The grand opening took place on
September 30, 2008.
The objects collected in the open-air
museum are typical representatives of architecture in Lodz at the
turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. These examples include: a
Protestant church, built in 1848 and brought here from Novosolna, a
19th century dacha from Pabianik, a one-story house for workers,
wooden tram stops, and four workshop houses. Thus, visitors to the
museum can see with their own eyes the conditions in which workers
lived in the 19th century.
Additional elements such as street
lamps, street name plates recreate the realities of those times. The
interiors of the buildings are intended for exhibitions and various
seminars and master classes. Visitors can purchase products from
manufacturers and take part in events organized at the museum.
The authors of the architectural concept of the open-air museum are
two designers from Wrocław - Anita Luniak and Teresa Mromlińska. The
cost of the investment is approximately PLN 32 million, more than half
of which comes from the European Regional Development Fund.
The
open-air museum received a special distinction in the competition for
the best developed public space in the Łódź Voivodeship in 2008, in the
category of newly created public spaces, awarded by the Society of
Polish Town Planners, Branch in Łódź.
On November 25, 2012, on
World Teddy Bear Day, the "Three Bears" monument was solemnly unveiled
in the open-air museum, the sixth sculpture created as part of the
"Fairytale Boat" project, which is a set of small sculptures
commemorating the most popular heroes of films produced by Se-ma-for.
In 2015, the open-air museum was declared a historical monument.
The open-air museum includes an over 200-year-old larch church, a
summer villa from Scaleniowa Street in Ruda, and five nearly
100-year-old houses of craftsmen from Wólczańska, Żeromskiego, Kopernika
and Mazowiecka streets.
In the houses you can see the conditions
in which workers working in the textile industry lived, there are also
craft workshops: weaving, glass, tannery.
The church (built
around 1848 as a Protestant church) was moved from Nowosolna, once a
village, and today part of the Widzew district of Łódź. The construction
of the walls of the building consisted of single wooden beams, and the
top of the front façade is crowned with a clock, wound by a clockmaker
who came for this purpose. Although the building does not currently
function as a temple, its interior has retained its sacral decor.
The wooden waiting room of the Łódź Narrow-Gauge Electric Commuter
Railways (suburban trams) from their Zgierz terminus at Jan Kiliński
Square from 1901 is interesting.
Two streets have been marked out
between the houses in the open-air museum - the main one, called Łódzka,
leads from the eastern wing of Geyer's White Factory towards the park.
Reymont. Along it, on both sides, there are craftsmen's houses. Parkowa
Street, which crosses it, leads to Milionowa Street, where the entrance
to the open-air museum is located (the second one leads through the
Textile Museum).