Ksendza mill or Księży Młyn, which translates as the Księży Mill, is a complex of
textile factories and related facilities built in Lodz in 1824 on
the site of a former mill village that belonged to the parish priest
of Lodz. Księży Mlyn is a vast area located east of Petrkowska
Street. It was founded next to the largest textile factory in
Europe. This city quarter has remained almost unchanged since the
heyday of industry in ód. The famous entrepreneur Karol Scheibler is
considered its founder.
The Księży Mill is a kind of city
within a city, a factory and residential complex designed in the
style of English industrial settlements. The red brick factory
buildings characteristic of ód in the past, residential brick houses
for workers, the residence of the factory owners, a railway track, a
fire station, a gas factory and a factory club have survived to this
day.
Travelers who find themselves on the territory of the
complex are amazed to learn that Księży Mlyn is not a tourist
attraction, but a quarter in which people still live. Life here is
no longer in full swing, as it used to be, when its rhythm was
determined by the sounds of factory sirens and the noise coming from
the spinning mill. Many residents are leaving their homes in Ksienzi
Mlyn due to the ongoing reconstruction of the quarter and higher
rents. Most do not come back, tired of living in cramped rooms. Only
10% of the old residents who have lived here over the past few
decades have remained. The rest are wealthy people who can afford to
buy expensive lofts in former factory buildings.
Księży Mlyn
looks especially picturesque at sunset.
The complex was built on the site of a former mill settlement,
belonging to the Łódź parish priest, mentioned in 1428 and 1521. There
was also a village administrator's mill, later called the vogt's mill,
erected at the same time, a short distance from the presbytery, in the
upper reaches of the Jasień River, a right tributary nerve. Pursuant to
the decision of the authorities of November 21, 1823, the Wójtowski,
Księży and Lamus mills were taken over by the municipal commune with the
intention of using them for industrial purposes, in accordance with the
rules established on January 30, 1821 by the government administration
of the Kingdom of Poland.
The first to build a manufacture there
was Krystian Wendisch, who launched a large spinning mill (1827–1830),
then, after his death (1830), Fryderyk Karol Moes, and after his death
(1863) Teodor Krusche, son of the factory owner from Pabianice, Beniamin
Krusche. A fire in 1870 interrupted its production activities. In the
same year, the burnt factory and the entire property of Księży Młyn and
Wójtowski Młyn were bought by Karol Wilhelm Scheibler, an entrepreneur
dynamically developing his cotton plant at Wodny Rynek in Łódź.
The first spinning mill of Karol Scheibler (coming from a German
family, who with a Belgian passport reached Łódź via Ozorków in 1854),
with a 40 HP steam engine, was established at the Water Market (today
Plac Zwycięstwa) next to Źródliska Park in 1855. expansion of the
enterprise in this area to a factory and residential development, which
is the first planned development of this type in Łódź. In the first
phase of development, the whole complex constituted a kind of jurydyka –
an enclave on urban land, not subject to municipal authorities.
Starting from the 1870s, another Scheibler factory complex began to grow
- on an unprecedented scale - "Księży Młyn" (designed by Hilary Majewski
- although this attribution raises serious doubts), with the largest
building of a cotton spinning mill in Łódź (207 m long - currently
Wincentego Tymienieckiego 25), a housing estate for workers (currently
ul. Przędzalniana 46-52) with one-story residential houses for workers,
the so-called famuły (1886-1890), factory shop, so-called consumer
(1882), with a fire station (1883-1884), a hospital named after st. Anna
(1884), a free school for workers' children, a palace complex and a park
with a pond. Today, this compact residential and industrial district,
which is an extraordinary "city within a city", is one of the most
interesting industrial monuments in the world. The factory complex in
Księży Młyn – also known as Pffafendorf in German – is the first complex
on this scale, later unsurpassed, presenting the layout characteristic
of Łódź: factory - residence - housing estate. This is one of the best
projects of this type, not only in Poland, but also in Europe. As a
complex, it was entered into the register of monuments, and for several
years efforts have been made to include it on the UNESCO World Heritage
List.
Scheibler's enterprise (the largest among textile
enterprises in the Kingdom of Poland) covered almost the entire zone of
water and factory estates, stretching from Piotrkowska Street to the
border of Widzew (to the current Konstytucyjna Street). The total area
of these areas was over 500 ha, which was about 14% of the city's
territory at that time. The entire complex was distinguished not only by
the modernity of production, but also by the spatial organization which
was perfect for those times. All factory facilities, with a total volume
of over 1 million m³, were the first in Łódź to be connected by a system
of railway sidings, approximately 5 km long, from the line of the
Fabryczno-Łódź railway (launched on November 17, 1865).
Scheibler
built rows of semi-detached workers' houses around 1865 on the northern
side of the Wodny Rynek, in the 1870s next to the spinning mill in
Księży Młyn, at the end of the 19th century on Emilii Street (today ul.
W. Tymienieckiego) and at the beginning of the 20th century along
Przędzalniana Street. The factory housing estate in Księży Młyn was
especially developed. Today it is one of the most valuable architectural
and urban monuments of Łódź.
The entire industrial complexes were
complemented by palace residences: at the Water Market Square (1865) -
the palace of the Scheibler family, currently the Museum of
Cinematography in Łódź, at Piotrkowska Street in the vicinity of Rynek
Bielnikowy - currently occupied by the Łódź University of Technology and
at the corner of Przędzalniana and Emilii Streets (1875) - currently the
Rezydencja Księży Młyn, a branch of the Museum of Art. The latter was
occupied by Scheibler's son-in-law, Edward Herbst, and his wife Matylda.
On November 18, 1921, due to the unstable economic situation in
reborn Poland, Scheibler's factory was merged with Ludwik Grohman's
textile factory (founded in 1842 by Traugott Grohmann, Ludwik's father).
As a result, the largest textile industry company in Poland was
established in the early 1920s (United Textile Works of K. Scheibler and
L. Grohman, SA in Łódź).
Complex I - Water Market (currently Zwycięstwa Square), Targowa
Street.
After receiving a square at Wodny Rynek in 1854 from the
city authorities, Karol Scheibler started to build a factory complex. In
the following years, from 1855 on the Water Market, he built: cotton
spinning mills (1855 and 1868), weaving mills (1856 and 1868), boiler
houses (1856), warehouses (1856 and 1870), finishing plants (1868).
Additionally, in the years 1865–1868, he erected a complex of five
workers' houses. In 1855, next to the enterprise, he built a residential
house for himself and his family, which in 1865 was expanded into a
neo-Renaissance palace, and in 1886 modernized (today it houses the
Museum of Cinematography in Łódź).
at ul. Targowa, in turn, a
residential house for technical supervision employees (1896), an
administration building (early 20th century) and a commercial center
(1912) were erected.
Complex II - areas on the Jasień River:
Księży Młyn (ul. św. Emilii (currently ul. Tymienieckiego),
Przędzalniana, Fabryczna, Księży Młyn, Milionowa).
After
purchasing the factory estate with the manor farm from T. Krusche in
Księży Młyn and the land along Emilii Street from Jakub Peters,
Scheibler began the construction of the entire factory complex in the
early 1870s, including the largest building in Łódź - a cotton spinning
mill.
In the following years (since 1870) he built at Św. Emilia,
a spinning mill (1870-1879), outbuildings for a spinning mill
(1873-1879), a dye house, a finishing shop and four warehouses. In
addition, similarly to the Wodny Rynek, but on a much larger scale, a
whole complex of workers' houses was erected: nineteen at Św. Emilia
(1873–1900), eighteen (three rows of six buildings each) at Księży Młyn
Street (1873–1875) and three at Fabryczna Street (1885). He also built a
factory fire station and residential houses for firefighters at Św.
Emilia (1878), a factory hospital at Milionowa Street (1882), a school
at Księży Młyn Street (1877), a consumer shop (a shop for the residents
of the estate) and a palace complex at the corner of Przędzalniana and
Tymienieckiego Streets (1875), which was occupied by Scheibler's
son-in-law, Edward Herbst .
Complex III - St. Emilia and
Widzewska (now Jan Kiliński).
st. Emilia includes: Kopisch's
bleacher (1829) at Św. Emilii (one of the oldest residential and factory
buildings in Łódź has never been a bleachery), a new bleachery (1878), a
bleachery and a finishing plant (1880), two factory buildings and a
warehouse (1890), a power plant (1910–1914), administration buildings, a
five workers' houses (1900), maintenance service flats (end of the 19th
century) and a children's hospital (built in 1904–1905 by the
Nestler-Ferrenbach company according to the design of Paweł Rübensahm.
Two workers' houses were built at Jana Kilińskiego Street (1890) and
at number 187 (in 1898 or 1899) the so-called Nowa Weaving Mill
(designed by Paweł Rübensahm) - a facility known from the meeting in
1987 of Pope John Paul II with the workers at the workshop.
In
2015, Księży Młyn was declared a monument of history. On May 23, 2016,
the National Bank of Poland, as part of the "Discover Poland" series,
introduced into circulation (up to 1.2 million pieces) a five-zloty coin
with a visible fragment of Księży Młyn - a spinning mill, the oldest
building and a factory chimney. The coin design by Dobrochna Surajewska
was based on a photo taken in 1926 by Włodzimierz Pfeiffer.
On May 23, 2016, the National Bank of Poland issued a commemorative 5-zloty coin from the "Discover Poland" series, depicting Księży Młyn.