Piotrkowska Street is the main artery of ód, one of the longest
trade routes in Europe, with a length of 4.9 km. Piotrkowska Street
is an important tourist attraction connecting
Freedom Square with
Independence Square. From the very beginning, this street was the
central axis around which a large city grew. Initially, it was only
a trade route, which gradually turned into a showcase of the city
with recreation areas and shopping areas.
The first roadside
settlements appeared along the street in 1821, when industrial
development began here by order of the President of the province of
Mazovia. The settlement was named "New Town" and was located south
of the "old" Lodz. In 1815, the street was named Piotrkowska in the
part that connected two market squares. Lodz has never had a classic
city center, and it was Piotrkowska Street that took on this role.
Until 1990, Piotrkowska Street did not differ much from other
city highways in appearance, although it was the most important
street in the city. The first step was the gradual reduction of
traffic, as well as the relocation of tram lines. In 1990, Polish
architects decided to turn the street into a fashionable pedestrian
thoroughfare. The road was paved with cobblestones, lanterns and
street benches appeared along the street. Tenants began to appear in
the former tenement buildings: bars, cafes, shops and restaurants
were set up.
Today Piotrkowska Street is the social and
commercial center of the city. Almost all the most important
administrative offices are located nearby. Most events, city
festivals and parties are held here.
Initially, today's Piotrkowska Street served as a route connecting
Piotrków Trybunalski with Zgierz, on the route of which there was a
small, roadside urban settlement of Łódź, located in the then dense Łódź
Forest. Before 1821, the future street was called the Piotrków route. In
1821, Rajmund Rembieliński - the President of the Commission of the
Mazowieckie Voivodeship - started activities aimed at regulating
(creating) a factory settlement. The new settlement, called Nowe Miasto,
was established in the years 1821–1823 and was located south of the
"old" rural Łódź, i.e. the land of the Old Town. The year 1821 is
assumed to be the foundation of Piotrkowska Street: a new axis of the
route was marked out (straightening its course), an octagonal market
square (Rynek Nowe Miasto, today's Plac Wolności) and individual
crossroads. The appointment was made by the Commissioner of the
Administrative Department of the Commission of the Mazowieckie
Voivodeship, Bonifacy Witkowski, who separated construction sites and
prepared a document dated May 24, 1821 "Specification of the newly
created Settlements for Clothiers in Nowe Miasto and calculation of the
Gardens needed for them"[5]. The areas along Piotrkowska and adjacent
streets were divided into over 200 plots.
Regulatory plan of the
new settlement, including the designation of, among others, the course
of Piotrkowska Street and individual plots, entitled "Plan of the
situation of regulated cloth gardens in the City of Łódź located in the
Łęczyca District of the Mazowieckie Voivodship", was drawn up in 1823
(on the basis of the map by the surveyor Plebanowski) by the surveyor
Filip de Viebig, who acted on behalf and according to the instructions
of Rajmund Rembieliński. In the same year, during the naming of new
streets by Mayor Antoni Czarkowski, the name "Ulica Piotrkowska"
appeared for the first time. At that time, Piotrkowska, as a city
street, started from the north between the bridge over the Łódka River
and Podrzeczna Street, and ended in the south at Cegielniana Street
(today's Stefana Jaracza Street). It was crossed by the following
streets: Północna, Średnia, Południowa and Cegielniana (the names of the
streets on both sides of Piotrkowska were the same). The first pole with
the name of the street was placed on what is now Nowomiejska Street
between the bridge over the Łódka River and Podrzeczna Street.
On
separate plots, standard houses-workshops were built for clothiers,
which were located facing the street. The rest of the individual plots
were "gardens" for the owner's family. The New Town Square performed
administrative functions for the craftsmen's settlement. At that time,
the entire route, including the Old Market Square and the New Market
Square, was a road connecting the capital of the Piotrków Governorate,
which was Piotrków Trybunalski, with Zgierz and Łęczyca.
In 1823,
a decision was made to enlarge the area intended for handicraft
workshops[8]. Therefore, in the years 1824–1828, south of Nowe Miasto
(in municipal and government areas), another industrial settlement was
established, intended primarily for settlement of linen and cotton
weavers, which was called Łódka. The settlement was located along the
Piotrków route and the Jasień river, and also included the government
villages of Wólka, Zarzew and Widzew. First, a total of 230 plots along
the Piotrków route and cross-streets were marked out. On the plan drawn
up by the geometer Jan Leśniewski in 1825 (a copy from 1827), the
Piotrkowska route was presented as "Piotrkowska Street". Along with the
parcelling of the land along and to the west of Piotrkowska Street,
serfs from the village of Wólka (area of Piotrkowska - Wólczańska -
Czerwona Streets) were resettled along with their houses (28 "dymów" and
about 260 inhabitants) to the government villages of Zarzew and Widzew.
During the regulation of Piotrkowska Street, the course of seven new
crossroads was marked out in the new settlement. It was then that the
streets were built, which, as in the New Town, had the same names on the
eastern and western sides of Piotrkowska Street: Dzielna (today's
Zielona - Narutowicza crossroads), Krótka (6 August - Traugutta),
Przejazd (Andrzeja - Tuwima), Nawrot (Zamenhofa - Nawrot), Główna
(Mickiewicz - Piłsudski), Empty (Żwirki - Wigury), Boczna (Radwańska -
Brzeźna) and reaching Piotrkowska: Placowa (Skorupki), Przędzalniana
(Tymienieckiego), Czerwona, Zarzewska (Przybyszewskiego), and also the
Upper Market Square (currently Reymonta Square) and Bielnikowy Market,
which was to serve as the center of the new settlement (currently it is
a square located at the intersection of Piotrkowska and Tymienieckiego
Streets, opposite the Łódź Cathedral).
After the arrangement of
the new settlement was completed, Piotrkowska Street formally consisted
of two parts: the older one (designated in 1821 in the Nowe Miasto area)
and the newer one (in the Łódka settlement) starting south of the Upper
Market Square (current Reymont Square) near the modern Independence
Square at the border with the private villages of Rokita and Chojny, and
ending in the north at Dzielna Street (today's Zielona - Narutowicza
crossroads). The break between the Cegielniana crossroads in Nowe Miasto
and the Dzielna crossroads in the Łódka settlement (currently the pairs
of Jaracz - Więckowskiego and Zielona - Narutowicza crossroads,
respectively) resulted from the fact that the two settlements (cloth in
the north and weaving and spinning in the south) in this section did not
connect - They were separated by about two hundred meters long,
unregulated stretch of the route, which until 1840 was in the hands of a
dozen or so private persons. In 1828, a government letter stated that
"the main street, Piotrkowska, passes through the drapery settlement of
Łódź and the linen and cotton settlement of Łódka".
New Town was
settled by clothiers coming mainly from the Grand Duchy of Poznań and
Lower Silesia, and in the settlement of Łódka linen and cotton weavers
from Saxony, Bohemia, Lower Silesia and Prussia. The newcomers received
a plot of land for "hereditary and rent" property as perpetual usufruct,
financial aid for development, wood for building a house and exemption
from taxes for 6 years. The plots allocated at Piotrkowska Street
usually had an area of less than a morga to almost 2 morgens (i.e. from
0.5 to 1 ha according to the Nowopolska morga), and their width at the
street ranged from 17 to 22 meters. In 1827, the eastern side of the
street had 143 plots, and the western side - 153. Apart from the first
houses built by weavers, government houses (12 wooden and 28 brick) were
built at Piotrkowska Street (near the Jasień River near the bleachery
shop at Tymienieckiego Street) with a view to renting them craftsmen.
These houses were standardized and served as models according to which
craftsmen should build their own. Despite the large amenities, the
development of the plots progressed more slowly than expected - the
craftsmen first erected small wooden buildings at the back of the plots,
leaving the street fronts empty for future grander developments. In
1832, there were 228 plots of land undeveloped on Piotrkowska Street. In
the years 1827–1828, at the New Town Square at the exit of Piotrkowska
Street, two classicist buildings were built: the town hall (which was
the seat of the municipal authorities in the years 1830–1915) and the
Evangelical church (rebuilt at the end of the 19th century), which was
erected at the request of the colonists (mainly German weavers).
Education also developed. Due to the insufficient number of places in
government schools, private elementary schools were opened. The first
such school approved by the authorities was founded in 1839 by Mikołaj
Olszewski at 178 Piotrkowska Street.
In 1829, it was designed at
the request of the authorities of the Kingdom of Poland, the so-called a
factory route connecting Łowicz (among others via Łódź) with Kalisz. The
construction of the route on Piotrkowska Street was completed in 1834,
and the culmination was the erection of four iron verst poles marking
the distance to Warsaw. The pole marking 131 versts was erected at
Cegielniana Street (Jaracza), and the last one (134 versts) at the
bridge over the Jasień River. The route was covered with crushed stone
(looting), and the maintenance of the surface was carried out by the
Transport Lines Management in Warsaw. The route was 2,898 m long, but it
did not include Nowe Miasto, where the street was paved (works were also
completed in 1834) and remained under the management of the city. A year
later, the street was planted with Italian poplars, the nurseries of
which were located behind the plots at the New Town Square and behind
property no. 184. Public gardens were another form of beautifying the
street. The first of them was founded by Jan Adamowski (the owner of a
wooden inn house with a tavern built in 1824 at Rynek Nowomiejski 16 -
now Plac Wolności 9), who in 1827 first built a half-timbered
outbuilding on three plots of land (at number 175a), then a bowling
alley (1828) and a brick inn (1829), and at the back he arranged an
English-style walking garden. He called the whole architectural complex
"Paradis".
The first brick factory buildings (manufactories) at
Piotrkowska Street were built in the late 1820s. In 1827, Jan Krystian
Rundzieher, on one of the received plots (Piotrkowska 303), built a
two-story house intended for a linen spinning mill. A year later, Jan
Traugott Lange built two buildings at 287–301 Piotrkowska Street: a
dyehouse and a printing house[16]. In 1828, Ludwik Geyer came to Lodz
from Saxony, who first developed a three-room wooden house on property
no. In 1833, he purchased property no. 282 (from the bankrupt printer
Antoni Potempa), and seven years later he bought two properties at an
auction from the government: 303–315 (after Rundzieher) and 287–301
(after Lange). In 1833, he built a classicist manor house at No. 286,
and in 1843 a brick two-story house at the corner of Piotrkowska Street
and Górny Rynek (also Piotrkowska property No. 286), called Geyer's
Palace. Ludwik Geyer invested his profits by displaying e.g. a dyehouse,
a washing plant and a printing house. Ludwik Geyer's largest investment
was the construction of a three-story factory building at number 282 in
1835–1837, which housed a steam spinning mill and a mechanical weaving
mill (the so-called "White Factory"). A year later, a brick pavilion and
a building were added to the spinning mill, in which (at the end of
1838) the first steam engine in Łódź was installed, and the first
factory chimney in Łódź appeared on the property. In the 1840s, it was
the largest cotton factory in the Kingdom (now the Central Museum of
Textiles is located within its walls). Another steam engine (along with
a chimney of "excellent size") was placed in 1847 on Geyer's second
factory complex on property 303–305. In 1853, at 268 Piotrkowska Street,
the first steam mill was built by Leonard Fessler, a calico printer.
In the 1830s, the section of Piotrkowska Street in the New Town
quickly lost its industrial character. Even before the November
Uprising, there was a wide variety of professions in the settlement of
clothiers. It was not uncommon for newcomers who declared themselves to
be clothiers to change their profession to a more profitable one - they
became shopkeepers, carpenters, bricklayers, ran a tavern or left the
city after experiencing a failure in running workshops. After the
November Uprising, which was a blow to the nascent cloth industry, the
draper's workshop was virtually unheard of: the decline of the cloth
industry was mainly related to the introduction of a new tariff limiting
the export of textile products to the Russian market. On the other hand,
in the Łódka settlement, the development of the textile industry along
Piotrkowska Street was clearly visible - the plots covered only cotton
weavers (only such an occupation was mentioned in the declaration
protocols granting them perpetual and rent ownership), and in the years
1831–1849 a different occupation than directly related to textile
production in the southern section street was rare. The producers of
cotton products (cheap and practical) had their sale secured mainly in
the territory of the Kingdom of Poland, so the change in customs tariffs
had no meaning for them. From 1831, the development of Łódź and
Piotrkowska Street was associated with the cotton industry.
In
the Łódka settlement, on the section from Cegielniana to Czerwona
Streets, from the mid-1830s, in addition to weavers' workshops,
dye-houses, printing houses and finishing shops began to be established
- the first dyer was August Sanger, who established a workshop at 228
Piotrkowska Street. in one field, dye-houses and printing houses
supplementing own production were also established. Most often, weavers
had from one to four weaving workshops and worked on their own account
or by outwork: material (yarn) was delivered to them and finished
products were collected. Those who had a greater financial contribution
created jobs and employed other weavers, e.g. the weaver Jan Heinzel,
the father of the future manufacturer Juliusz Heinzel, set up workshops
in a brick government house at 220 Piotrkowska Street, and lived in a
two-room wooden house in the courtyard of this property. In 1837, the
Assembly of Weavers, in which 560 foremen and 720 apprentices were
registered, decided to erect a "house of foremen" at 100 Piotrkowska
Street. The house, whose construction was supervised by Jakub Peters,
was put into use two years later.
In 1850, the entire front of
the street was built-up. All wooden buildings were one-story, and out of
85 brick buildings: 10 were single-story, 2 two-story factory buildings
(Geyera and Vorwerk), and 1 three-story (Geyer's spinning mill). Wooden
construction prevailed due to the building material, which was free for
the weavers who settled there, and the buildings, erected according to
standardized government plans with uniform architectural forms, were
monotonous. The second reason for the predominance of wooden
construction was the poverty of the weavers coming to Lodz, who,
investing a large part of the funds in buildings, did not have the
appropriate working capital to cover their business, which resulted in
bankruptcies. Taking the above into account, Mayor Franciszek Traeger
allowed non-compliance with the building instructions ordering the
development of plots at the main streets and market squares with brick
buildings. In 1850, the authorities allowed weavers to erect wooden
buildings also at the intersections of Piotrkowska Street.
In
addition to butcher shops and shops, in order to ensure economic needs,
three markets were located at Piotrkowska Street, where markets and
fairs were held. The first, the New Town Square, which is the central
point of the city (with the town hall, the Evangelical church, the first
pharmacy and the school), was founded in the years 1821-1823 as part of
the creation of a cloth settlement. The second one, the Upper Market
Square (now Plac Reymonta), was laid out in 1825 during the regulation
of the settlement of Łódka. The third was the market square called
Fabryczny (later John Paul II Cathedral Square, where the Łódź cathedral
is located). Originally, Rembieliński kept this square for himself with
the idea of erecting a residential house with a garden, but after the
stables, coach house, servants' apartment and foundations of the house
were built, he gave the square to Tytus Kopisch, who in turn (in the
early 1840s) gave the square to the city . From 1842, fairs were held on
this square. Despite the fact that Piotrkowska was the axis of the city
and its longest street, where traffic and population grew rapidly, there
were disproportionately few shops - in 1850, out of a total of 120 shops
in Łódź, only 24 were located on Piotrkowska Street. Most often, these
were general stores, where not only "spices" and other products
necessary in the household were sold, but also dyeing materials, yarn or
ready-made textiles, and the traders were often former weavers.
The years 1835-1865 were characterized by major changes in the ownership
of houses - only 43 out of a total of 260 houses in perpetual and rent
ownership did not change owners. Pursuant to the applicable regulations,
the perpetual and rent usufruct lasted for 30 years (with the
possibility of extension after paying an extraordinary fee - laudemium).
Until the 20th year of use, a weaver could only transfer his property to
another weaver (with the permission of the Provincial Commission), and
after 20 years (with the consent of the city authorities and making
changes in the rent register) also to a person of a different
profession. The new owner took over all legal obligations and had to pay
a laudemium equal to the annual rent to the Municipal Treasury. From
1870, as part of the permanent regulation of ownership rights, the
Magistrate encouraged the abolition of the perpetual and rent lease in
favor of full ownership of land. The purchase of municipal real estate,
which was in the possession of private individuals for an indefinite
period, was carried out on the basis of tsarist regulations issued in
1870, in which the purchase amount was set at twenty annual rents and
laudemium. There was a lot of interest in buying out, because the
existing lessees became the owners of plots in the city center (i.e. of
high value) for a small price, because the annual rent had been
unchanged since the 1820s, with the value of money declining over 40
years. For example, a one-morga plot (about half a hectare) with an
annual rent of 1.5 rubles was taken over for less than 31 rubles (at
that time, this amount was the value of seven bushels of rye, i.e. about
700 kg).
Since the regulation of Piotrkowska Street, Jews were
deprived of the right to purchase property on the main street. In 1825,
Jews were assigned a district in the Old Town (area of Podrzeczna,
Wolborska and the southern frontage of the Old Market Square) as their
place of residence. Permission to live outside the district - after
meeting numerous requirements, the main criterion of which was wealth -
was granted extremely rarely: in the 1830s, two Jews, wealthy merchants,
lived on Piotrkowska Street: Ludwik Mamroth and Dawid Lande. Changes
began to take place after 1848, when the tsar's ukase made it easier for
the wealthy and at the same time assimilating Jews to live outside the
district after submitting an application and considering it by the city
authorities. The next ukase, from 1862, abolished any restrictions on
the purchase of land and the choice of place of residence. Despite this,
few Jews took advantage of the opportunity to change and moved to
Piotrkowska Street - most of those leaving the district lived near the
New Town Square, mainly on Nowomiejska Street.
From the
mid-nineteenth century, the process of changing the character of the
street began - from a factory to a commercial one: the city hall began
to receive numerous applications for permission to change the facade of
buildings by converting windows into shop doors and thus changing the
use of premises on the ground floor. There were also hams next to the
shops. The first building erected at the New Town Market Square (during
the regulation of Piotrkowska Street and the Nowe Miasto drapery
settlement in the years 1821–1823) was a tavern with an inn. The first
one in the Łódka settlement was erected in 1827 at 45 Piotrkowska
Street. In the 1840s, there were a total of 30 premises in the street,
mostly owned by former weavers. Most of the taverns had bowling alleys
and billiards (acting as places of entertainment, meetings and
socializing), and some of the taverns were also taverns, where you could
eat a hot meal in addition to drinking vodka or beer. Apart from
taverns, Bavarians (which were located at the corners of Piotrkowska
Streets) and restaurants were also established. The first restaurant at
Piotrkowska Street (at number 11) was founded by Adolf Manteuffel in
1862[38]. Confectionery shops supplemented the gastronomic offer. The
first information about them comes from 1843, when there was a
confectionery at 5 Piotrkowska Street, and in 1848 at no. 13 and 160.
However, these were not independent premises, because they functioned as
part of run taverns. The first real confectionery was founded in 1853 by
Fryderyk Sellin in a one-story brick house of Jan Lebelt (at Piotrkowska
47). In addition to the confectionery products sold there, the premises
served as a café.
The development of the city located on the busy
Piotrków route created a demand for accommodation for visitors. In 1853,
at 3 Piotrkowska Street, on the site of a wooden one-story house with
five rooms and a shop, the owner of the property, Antoni Engel, built a
one-story brick inn, which, together with outbuildings, had 30 rooms for
60 guests. It was the most impressive inn in Łódź, considered the first
hotel in Łódź - Hotel de Pologne. In 1853, there were 9 inns in Łódź,
including 2 on Piotrkowska. Increased traffic and communication needs of
an increasingly populous city as well as the expansion of its territory
resulted in the introduction, following the example of Warsaw, of
horse-drawn carriages. The first concession for the transport of people
by four horse-drawn carriages was granted to Julian Czajkowski and in
1840, stops at no. 175 and 282 appeared on Piotrkowska Street (as well
as on the Old and New Town squares).
In 1835, the street, as the
first in the city, was illuminated with reverber oil lanterns, and in
1841 (at 124 Piotrkowska Street) a city (public) well was located -
initially discovered with a crane, and from 1845 with a hand pump. From
the mid-1830s, the street was paved with fieldstone. Initially, short
sections were paved - in those places where the passage was difficult
during the rain, and in those where there was increased traffic. The New
Town Square was paved in the mid-1840s, and Górny and Fabryczny in 1860
were not paved. In 1842, the magistrate took care of maintaining order
in sanitary terms, hiring a person to clean the pavements and remove
garbage from the street twice a week. In 1860, the wooden bridges in
front of the houses were removed and the side ditches draining water
from the property were filled in, and paved gutters were laid in their
place, which contributed to changing the appearance and increasing the
prestige of the street.
From 1836, the city government raised
funds to build the city's first hospital, which was essential to the
growing city. The Fabryczny Market, located at Piotrkowska Street
(modern Cathedral Square), was chosen as its location. The construction
was managed by the Detailed Welfare Council. A one-story brick building
with a tiled roof, designed by architect Henryk Marconi, was erected in
1842–1845 at the back of the square, facing Piotrkowska Street. The
hospital was named after St. Aleksandra and functioned until 1921, when
a new place was found for it at ul. Aleksandrowska, and the building was
handed over for the establishment of the Higher Theological Seminary.
In the years 1848–1850, in connection with the estimation of
buildings for tax purposes, the numbering of properties on Piotrkowska
Street was put in order. Since the regulation of Łódka in the years
1823–1828, each of the three parts of the street (in the Old Town, Nowe
Miasto and in the settlement of Łódka) had a separate numbering starting
with 1. However, the historical division into settlements was kept. The
confusing numbering system, when individual blocks of the street were
given numbers with the addition of letters, was changed for the second
time in 1891 (after being marked with separate numbering of properties
on the blocks) and this system of property designation, with minor
changes, has survived to modern times. In September 1863, the City
Council approved the renaming of the section of the street from Rynek
Nowe Miasto (currently Plac Wolności) to Zgierska Street, which was
renamed Nowomiejska Street, and Piotrkowska Street was marked with new
metal plates. In addition, the names of those parts of the cross-streets
that ran west of Piotrkowska Street were changed. In 1887, as a result
of progressing Russification, the signs were changed into bilingual
ones.
On December 2, 1863, on the initiative of war chief
Broemsen, the first issue of the first Łódź newspaper, Lodzer Zeitung,
was published, published by Jan Petersilge - initially at 11 Piotrkowska
Street, and from the mid-1970s at number 18. In 1864, a municipal a
telegraph line (initially 1 verst long) as a fragment of the line
leading to the railway station in Rokiciny. In the same year, a decision
was made to replace the reverber (oil) lanterns with gas ones - new
lighting (89 lanterns on Piotrkowska Street) was launched on July 13,
1869.
The construction of the Fabryczna-Łódź railway line (1865),
which is a connection with the Warsaw-Vienna Railway, and the location
of the Łódź Fabryczna headend "as close as possible to Piotrkowska
Street" (which is a kind of inner courtyard and market for the great
"Łódź manufactory"), resulted in the shift of the center of Łódź from
the New Town Square to Piotrkowska Street, between Narutowicza and
Nawrot Streets. In 1869, on the section from the New Town Square to ul.
Dzielna (now Narutowicza Street), asphalt sidewalks were laid. When
laying new sidewalks, old poplars were cut down and replaced with
chestnut and acacia trees. In the years 1874–1876, the entire
carriageway of the factory route (created in 1829 on the part of
Piotrkowska from Narutowicza Street to Plac Niepodległości and owned by
the government) was paved, and from 1890 the surface of the pavements
was replaced with stone slabs, which turned out to be more practical
than asphalt.
In 1860, the first banking institution in the city
was opened at 286 Piotrkowska Street. It was a branch (exchange office
and warehouses) of Bank Polski located in the factory owner's palace,
which the bank bought for this purpose, along with part of the plot,
from Ludwik Geyer for 480,000. Polish zlotys. The appearance of other
financial institutions in Łódź, including Bank Handlowy in 1872 and the
Credit Society of Łódź (also in 1872), which granted loans not only for
future textile production, meant that after 1870 the authorities stopped
distributing land and providing financial assistance. From the
mid-1870s, a rapid development of housing construction began, which was
particularly visible on the main street of the city, where multi-storey
tenement houses began to be erected - Piotrkowska Street from a rural
street with weavers' houses turned into a metropolitan street: in the
mid-1870s In the 1980s, brick houses on Piotrkowska Street accounted for
about 30% of all buildings, and 20 years later about 75%, although until
the early 1980s, they were mostly two-story houses, most often with
seven axes, with a centrally located gate and an iron balcony above it.
From the beginning of the 1890s, brick one- and two-story houses
were added and wooden houses were demolished, replacing them mainly with
tenement houses, but this was done without taking into account the urban
coherence of the street (as the appearance of tenement houses was
decided in practice only by the owners of the property) and with
confusion factory buildings with residential and commercial buildings.
From the front, Piotrkowska Street became an elite street, where you
could rent multi-room apartments with all amenities. In 1876, at number
67, a two-story "Victoria" hotel was built, and a year later, a brick,
one-story Kerna Theater was erected in the courtyard of the property,
renamed in 1882 to the "Victoria" theater, which after World War II was
transformed into the "Polonia" cinema. In 1887, the two-story building
of Ludwik Meyer's wool products factory was converted into a "guest
house" under the name of the Grand Hotel. A sign of changes was also the
decision of the municipal authorities in 1883 to build a tram line on
Piotrkowska Street, first a horse-drawn one (the line was never built),
and then an electric one (1893). Therefore, the authorities applied to
the government to hand over the factory road to the supervision of the
city, which took place in 1887. The transfer of this section of the
street made it easier for the Magistrate to carry out various
investments. Architects and city builders who contributed to the
appearance of Piotrkowska Street were, among others, Jan Feliks
Bojanowski (1864–1870), Jan Karol Mertsching (1870–1872), Hilary
Majewski (1872–1892) and Ignacy Markiewicz. The street, especially in
the section from Narutowicz to Nawrot, became the main walking street of
Łódź at the end of the 19th century. The fronts of Piotrkowska Street,
once lined with weavers' houses, were filled with tenement houses with
shops also offering luxury goods and services. Warsaw companies opened
their branches. The first, impressive, big-city shop windows appeared on
Piotrkowska Street around 1885. The importance of fair markets and the
range of goods diminished - mainly groceries were traded. At the end of
the 19th century, on Piotrkowska Street, in the front houses and
outbuildings, there were 298 shops and warehouses offering articles of
the textile industry.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, apart from textile
shops (298), there were e.g. butcher shops (34), haberdashery and
tailor shops (19), jewelery shops (10), warehouses with colonial
goods (11), delicatessens (9), as well as confectioneries (7) and
bookshops and antique shops (8).
In 1883, the International
Telephone Society "Bella" began installing the telephone network and
connecting the first recipients. In 1897, the Magistrate signed an
agreement with a group of Łódź manufacturers for the construction
and operation of four tram lines[83], and on December 23, 1898, the
first electric tram run on Piotrkowska Street took place. On the
occasion of the construction of tram tracks, the St. Petersburg
Society for Improved Roadways laid, on the section from Nowy Rynek
to Główna Street, a pine road surface and gutters made of field
stone. In 1911, electric street lighting was launched on the section
from Plac Wolności to Aleja Mickiewicza, and in 1927 the entire
street was illuminated with electric lanterns. In 1899, the opening
took place by Władysław and Antoni Krzemiński - at ul. Piotrkowska
120 - the first permanent cinema in Poland, called the "Theater of
Living Photographs" (the projection apparatus of the Lumiére
brothers system was used).
In the years 1901-1912, the
largest neo-Gothic Catholic church in Łódź was built - at ul.
Piotrkowska 273, designed by architect Zillmann. In 1920, the church
was raised to the dignity of a cathedral, and in 1992 it was
recognized as an arch-cathedral. In 1909, the construction of the
neo-Romanesque Lutheran church of St. st. Mateusz at ul. Piotrkowska
283[92]. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the process of
raising the height of the front tenement houses intensified,
although the development was not uniform. From Nowy Rynek to Nawrot
Street, the buildings were mostly multi-storey houses (there were
several wooden, one-story houses), and there were over 30 wooden
streets in the southern section. In the section behind the houses,
undeveloped land often stretched from half of the property. With the
growing demand for apartments in tenement houses, house prices were
rising, and high rents ensured a large profit on investments in
their construction. The price of a square cubit of land cost as much
as a morga at the beginning of industrial Łódź. Many manufacturers
took advantage of the economic situation by moving their factories
to the outskirts of the city so that they could sell plots of land
at Piotrkowska Street for rental housing or convert factory
buildings into residential buildings (such was the case with Ludwik
Meyer when building the Grand Hotel). At the beginning of the second
decade of the 20th century, Poles owned only a dozen properties at
Piotrkowska, the rest of the owners were Germans (50% of houses) and
Jews (42%).
During World War II, on April 11, 1940, by order
of Adolf Hitler, the city was named Litzmannstadt, and ul.
Piotrkowska Adolf Hitler Straße.
In 1960, the Museum of the
History of Textiles (now the Central Museum of Textiles) was
established in the historic building of Ludwik Geyer's White Factory
at 282/284 Piotrkowska Street. In the years 1992–1997, the northern
section of the street was rebuilt into a pedestrian zone in four
implementation sections based on a design by Włodzimierz Nowakowski.
On June 4, 2000, the statue of John Paul II by Krystyna
Fałdyga-Solska was unveiled. On August 1, 2002, it was opened at ul.
Piotrkowska Monument to the Citizens of the Breakthrough of the
Millennium - i.e. the named surface covering a fragment of the main
street of the city (from ul. Tuwima to Nawrot). On May 16, 2008, a
vertical obelisk was erected to commemorate the 185th anniversary of
the renaming of the old Piotrkowska route into Piotrkowska Street.
Each rod (of the obelisk) with a thickness of 1 cm symbolizes one
year from this event[97] (the originator was Marek Janiak, then
president of the Piotrkowska Street Foundation).
In 2015,
Piotrkowska Street was declared a monument of history.
Before 1990 st. Piotrkowska, despite the fact that it was the most
important street in the city, did not stand out from other streets with
its decor. Plans to turn it into a promenade after World War II ended
only with the transfer of trams to the parallel Promenada (now
Kościuszko Avenue).
Before this change, the promenade played the
role of a walking boulevard. Its middle was a wide strip of greenery,
which was intended for a tram route. The political will was not enough
to actually replace Piotrkowska Street with a promenade, although the
idea resurfaced from time to time. The introduction to this was the
gradual reduction of traffic on the street by introducing a parking ban
and placing turn signs at almost all intersections on the section from
al. Mickiewicz to Plac Wolności.
In the years 1945–1990, the
street was progressively degraded. Until the mid-1970s, the old,
eclectic tenement houses were not considered monuments by the then
authorities. A dozen of them have been demolished for the construction
of office buildings and department stores, usually built in an
international style. Even in the 1980s, decorative elements of the
façades of deteriorating tenement houses, threatening passers-by, were
often simply removed from the walls, although the renovation of several
selected objects had already begun at that time.
The character of
the street changed only after 1990, when, on the initiative of architect
Marek Janiak, a member of the Łódź Kaliska artistic group, the
Piotrkowska Street Foundation was established, whose goal was to
modernize this street and implement the idea of a promenade. As the
first, in 1992, the section from Al. Piłsudski to ul. Tuwim. It was
lined with colorful cubes and equipped with modernist lanterns and other
elements of small architecture. It was strongly criticized by
conservators and cultural historians as incompatible with the general
atmosphere of this street.
Subsequent parts of the street to the
north, up to Plac Wolności, were rebuilt and closed to traffic in the
years 1993–1997. They were lined with gray cubes or cubes imitating old
cobblestones and provided with more and more beautiful, stylish elements
of small architecture. Each successive episode, however, had a different
surface and a different style of additions, which was also criticized.
Even before the last section intended for the promenade was handed over,
the cobblestone on the first section was severely damaged. From 1995, it
was gradually replaced with a grayer and more solid cube, in which the
Monument to the Citizens of Łódź of the Millennium Breakthrough was
built.
Along with the change in the design of the street, the
tenement houses and palaces standing along it were also renovated, into
which pubs, restaurants, shops and cafes moved in. Initially, mainly the
facades of the tenement houses were renovated, but with the increase in
popularity of the street and the occupancy of most of the most
attractive front premises, the revitalization gradually began to extend
to the backyards and outbuildings. Currently, although not all, a
significant percentage of courtyards are also paved and used for trade
and gastronomy.
In 2012, it was decided to renovate Piotrkowska Street on the section from Wolności Square to the intersection with Piłsudskiego and Mickiewicza Avenues, as the concrete cubes were in increasingly poor condition. The renovation was divided into stages, the aim was to make the surface uniform over the entire section - concrete blocks were replaced with granite slabs, lampposts were replaced, and the roadway was narrowed. The biggest change, however, is urban furniture - benches, racks and baskets have appeared, all anthracite. The renovation was completed in July 2014.
Today, Piotrkowska is the axis of the Łódź agglomeration. It is here
or nearby that almost all the most important public administration
offices, bank headquarters, shops, restaurants and plenty of pubs are
located. It is here that most of the Łódź events, festivities, marches
and state ceremonies take place.
The part of Piotrkowska Street
(the promenade) closed to traffic was called by the residents of Łódź
"bigle"[99]. Now (the entire) street is much more often referred to as
"Pietryna". It is the cultural, political, sentimental, commercial and
business center of Łódź.
After the Galeria Łódzka shopping center
was built near the southern end of the pedestrianized part of
Piotrkowska Street, many shops moved out of this street, which resulted
in its clear regression. After about a year, the premises of the
abandoned stores began to gradually fill up again, although some, at the
beginning of 2006, were still empty. A similar process was observed
after the opening of another shopping center near the northern end of
the street - Centrum Manufaktury.
Between ul. Tuwima and Nawrot
there is the Monument to the Citizens of Łódź of the Millennium
Breakthrough, i.e. the named surface covering a fragment of ul.
Piotrkowska; it is probably the only monument of its kind in the world,
currently containing 13,454 named cubes.
Since June 1, 2009, on
Piotrkowska Street, there have been street spas, i.e. a series of small
architecture objects, created thanks to the initiative of the Water and
Sewage Plant in Łódź as part of the "Fountains for Łódź" project.
Springs, in the form of granite columns with sculptures of children and
fish, provide drinking water to passers-by. Their creators are Lodz
sculptors: Magdalena Walczak and Marcin Mielczarek, whose author is also
the Monument of Teddy-eared Bear, located at 87 Piotrkowska Street.
The bugle call of Łódź is played every day at 12:00 from the window
of the City Hall of Łódź at ul. Piotrkowska 106 (until September 8, 2011
from the balcony of building no. 104, the Juliusz Heinzl Palace). The
piece is performed first towards Plac Wolności, and then in the opposite
direction – to Plac Niepodległości.
From Plac Niepodległości to the intersection with Aleja Mickiewicza
and Aleja Piłsudskiego, normal traffic is in force. This part of the
street is paved with asphalt and concrete slab pavements. In the section
from Plac Niepodległości to the intersection with Żwirki and Wigury
streets, there is an intensive traffic of trams and buses. Nevertheless,
there are also many shops, restaurants and pubs on this section of the
street.
From Aleja Piłsudskiego to Plac Wolności (with the
exception of sections Moniuszko-Traugutt and Roosevelta-Piłsudskiego)
the street is closed to normal traffic. The right of entry is granted to
persons with appropriate ZDiT identifiers (residents, people running
shops and pubs, security vehicles, taxis and many notables) and
suppliers. The speed limit is 20 km/h here 24/7. Turn signs are posted
at every intersection.
Piotrkowska is not formally a promenade.
This situation changes only during mass events, when the street is
closed to traffic, e.g. during "Dni Łodzi". Piotrkowska is not marked as
a pedestrian zone, but it is a street with limited car traffic. Due to
the length of this section and the lack of typical public road transport
along it, its role was largely taken over by rickshaws. Rickshaws on
Piotrkowska Street were inaugurated in 1999 by an enthusiast of these
vehicles. In the same year, several rickshaws appeared on the initiative
of the Piotrkowska Street Foundation.
Since 2001 at ul. More and
more rickshaws began to appear on Piotrkowska Street. Their number
reached its apogee in 2007–2010, when tourists and residents of Łódź
could use almost 300 rickshaws. Since 2010, the number of rickshaws has
been steadily decreasing, and due to the renovation of Piotrkowska
Street in 2012–2014, only one company dealing with professional
production and rental of rickshaws remained on Piotrkowska Street. In
2019, identifiers were introduced that allow rickshaws to move around
Piotrkowska Street and at the same time are a certificate that the
rickshaws meet the technical and aesthetic parameters of the Cultural
Park, which is ul. Piotrkowska. Łódź is one of the few cities in Europe
where rickshaw transport has become a permanent fixture and fulfills
practical transport functions, and is not only a tourist attraction.
Rickshaws run along Piotrkowska all year round. Most rickshaws are
equipped with canopies and wind shields, which enables their operation
also in difficult weather conditions. The rickshaws that drive along ul.
Piotrkowska, are produced by the Łódź company "AT Instytut", rickshaws
of the same production run, among others, in Munich, Berlin, London and
the United Arab Emirates.
In 2003, as an alternative to
rickshaws, the so-called trambus - a slow bus, not exceeding the speed
of 20 km/h, which is a dummy of the historic Herbrand tram "on rubber
wheels". However, due to the renovation of the street, the trambus
service on Piotrkowska Street was suspended, and after the work was
completed, it was not restored.
In spring and autumn, part of the
road is occupied by gardens run by restaurants, cafes and pubs. Their
greatest density occurs in the section from Roosevelta Street to Jaracza
Street. This part of Piotrkowska Street plays the same role as in other
cities it is performed by the old town squares.
Since 1999, ul. Piotrkowska is decorated with outdoor bronze sculptures standing on its pavements, commemorating famous people associated with Łódź, who form the so-called The Gallery of Great Lodz Citizens.
On ul. Piotrkowska between ul. 6 August and the Rubinstein Passage is the Avenue of Stars. The originator of the avenue, following the Hollywood model, in 1996 was Jan Machulski. The first brass star - for actor Andrzej Seweryn - was built in two years later. On the even (eastern) side there are stars of the directors, on the odd side there are bas-reliefs of the actors.
No. 1 – Town Hall (side wing)
No. 2 – the church of the Holy
Spirit
No. 3 – Antoni Engel's tenement house and Pasaż Róża
No. 4
– a large-city tenement house
No. 5 – Abraham Prussak's tenement
house
No. 6 – tenement house of Karol Hielle and Karol Dittrich
No. 11 – the Scheibler tenement house
No. 12 – Dawid Sendrowicz's
tenement house
No. 13 – Jan Peter's tenement house
No. 17 – Chaim
Bławat's tenement house
No. 19 – Abram Lubiński's tenement house
No. 22 – Bechtold tenement house
No. 29 – Wilhelm Landau's banking
house
No. 31 – Tenement house of Sender Dyszkin
No. 32 -
Department Store "Magda"
No. 37 – Dawid Szmulewicz's tenement house
No. 39 – Józef Czapiewski's tenement house
No. 43 – Oszer Kohn's
tenement house
No. 44 – Rafał Sachs' tenement house
No. 46 – Józef
Rosenthal's tenement house
No. 47 – Fischer tenement house
No. 48
– the tenement house of the R. Kindler Joint Stock Society
No. 49 –
Dawid Prussak's tenement house
No. 51 - tenement house of I.K.
Poznanski
No. 53 – Herman Konstadt's tenement house
No. 54 –
Franciszek Fischer's tenement house
No. 63 – Kretschmer's tenement
house
No. 67 - Polonia cinema
No. 70 – Szeps family tenement house
No. 72 - Hotel Grand
No. 74 – House of the Ludwik Geyer Joint Stock
Society
No. 77 – Maximilian Goldfeder's Palace – Banking House
No.
85 – Edward Kindermann's tenement house
No. 86 - "Gutenberg House" by
Jan Petersilge (elements of neo-gothic, neo-renaissance, neo-baroque)
No. 87 – Alojzy Balle's tenement house
No. 90 – Teodor Steigert's
tenement house
No. 95 - "Saspol" Shopping Center
No. 96 – Siemens
office building
No. 98 – Emil Schmechel's Garment Magazine
No. 99
– Szaja Goldblum's tenement house
No. 100a - "The Esplanade"
No.
101 – Jakub Hofman's tenement house
No. 104 – Juliusz Heinzel's
Palace (neo-Renaissance) – City Hall of Łódź
No. 106 – the Monitz
tenement house
No. 107 – Salomon Baharier's tenement house
No. 108
- Palace cinema. In the years 1930–1932, the Office of the Watchtower
Society in Poland.
Leon Schiller Avenue
No. 113 – Albert Bohme's
tenement house
No. 114 – Warszawski's tenement house
No. 114/116 -
market hall
No. 118 – Juliusz Szulc's tenement house
no. 120 –
tenement house; in 1899, the Krzeminski brothers opened the first
permanent cinema in Poland - Cabinet of Illusions. Currently, the seat
of the Stare Kino Cinema Residence hotel and the "Stare Kino" analog
cinema
No. 127 - residential and service building "Bolek"
No. 128
– the Schychta tenement house
No. 135 – Karol Eisert's tenement house
No. 137/139 – Juliusz Kindermann's palace
No. 138/140 – Franciszek
Ramisch's factory, now Off Piotrkowska
No. 143 - the house of the
company "Krusche - Ender"
No. 146 - the house of the A&A Jewelery
House
No. 147 – the Schweikert tenement house
No. 151 – Gustaw
Adolf Kindermann's palace
No. 153 – Florian Jarisch's tenement house
No. 164 - Tenement House Monument
No. 166/168 - Orange Plaza
No.
179 – Ewald Kern's palace
No. 181 – Leopold Krusche's tenement house
No. 203/205 – tenement house of the Tomaszów Artificial Silk Factory
(Charlie Cinema)
No. 213 – a large-city tenement house
No. 215 –
Gelich's tenement house
No. 219 – a large-city tenement house
No.
225 – the Schmidt tenement house
No. 234/236 – August Haertig's
palace
No. 242/250 – Markus Silberstein's factory
No. 243 –
Gottlieb Beer's tenement house (the oldest two-story brick house in
Łódź) and the former building of the concert hall of the Łódź Men's
Singing Society
No. 252/254 – Karl König's tenement house
No. 256
– one of the oldest gas stations in Łódź, formerly a one-story house
stood in this place. In 1872 Cezary Richter opened the first Polish
bookstore in Łódź
No. 258/260 – tenement house of Henryk Birnbaum,
the so-called the Solidarity tenement house, the seat of the German
consulate in the interwar period
No. 262/264 – Robert Schweikert's
Palace (eclecticism) – European Institute
No. 265 - Cathedral of St.
Stanisław Kostka
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
No. 266/268 –
Scheibler family palace complex (neo-baroque)
No. 272 – Adolf
Steinert's Palace
No. 272a/272b – the palace of the brothers Karol
and Emil Steinert (neo-baroque)
No. 275 – House of the "Betania"
Association (neo-baroque). In the yard there was a chapel of the Free
Reformed Church
No. 278 – tenement house from the 19th century.
Gustaw Geyer's lace factory was located there from 1888, and in the
front rooms - a tavern.
No. 279/285 – Evangelical-Augsburg Church st.
Matthew
No. 280 – Ludwik Geyer's Playhouse. Place of rehearsals of
the first orchestras and choirs supported by Ludwik Geyer. There were,
among others, theater groups of F. Pietrzykowski (1846) or W. Raszewski
(1848)
No. 280a – the building of the former power plant in the
Ludwik Geyer factory complex
No. 282 - Ludwik Geyer's White Factory
(classicism) - Central Museum of Textiles
Reymont park
No. 286 –
Ludwik Geyer's manor house
No. 286 – Ludwik Geyer's palace
Władysław Reymont square
No. 288 – an office building erected in the
1990s. Until the mid-nineteenth century, small residential houses with
shops on the ground floors.
No. 290 – a tenement house from 1896,
erected for Samuel Zerbe.
No. 292 – tenement house of Jan Starowicz
Pod Góralem
No. 294 – a tenement house from the end of the 19th
century, owned by the Winers. In the past, there was a department store
Bracia Płockier i Spółka.
No. 297/303 – buildings from the years
1882–1903, erected for Ludwik Geyer's Joint-Stock Society of Cotton
Manufactories (housed: apparatus, dye house, warehouses, weaving mill
and spinning mill).
No. 305 – industrial building, built by Ludwik
Geyer after 1853. This is where Jan Rundzieher's factory was located,
with a starch factory, a dye house and a bleach factory. Some of the
buildings, today marked with numbers 297/303 and 305, were ruined in
November 2008 by a private investor without the intervention of the city
authorities to protect the monument. The remaining factory buildings
were included in the so-called The Red Book of the Fabrykancka
Association and the Group of Certain People.
No. 307 – the house of
Karol Oberman (his son Gustaw ran a sausage shop here), in 1909
Franciszek Winnicki opened a pharmacy here.
No. 309 - after 1905, the
building was the seat of the Society for the Promotion of Education,
later a book lending office was located here.
No. 311/313 – post
office building, built in 1961. Earlier, from 1936, there were tennis
courts of the L. Geyer Sports Club here.
No. 315 – a residential
building from the beginning of the 20th century
No. 317 – Hala
Targowa Górniak
There has never been a synagogue at Piotrkowska Street (there was only one department store, which for a short time served as a synagogue, which is why many people mistake it for a synagogue). Many Jews, however, also made their apartments available for prayer purposes as private prayer houses.