Local history
Information about the town – Polska / łódzkie
In July 1423 King Władysław Jagiełło signed a foundation charter of the town with its present name. Łódź was then owned by the bishops of Kujawy. Following the second partition of Poland it came within the borders of the territory annexed by Prussia. The partitioners took it away from the bishops and tried to take away the municipal rights from Łódź.
At the time the first German settlers appeared in the neighbouring area, and Jewish settlers came to the neighbouring trade settlements. The year 1815 and creation of the Kingdom of Poland gave the town new opportunities. They were additionally increased by the good location of the town in the Włocławek – Łęczyca – Piotrków trade route. Textile settlements sprang up in the area, such as Ozorków and Aleksandrów. In 1820 Łódź still had the character of an agricultural town, but was already slowly coming under the influence of the new economic changes occurring in the region.
Soon it was counted among industrial settlements and included in the decree on foundation principles, competence of offices, and amounts of state loans. The author of the decree was Rajmund Rembeliński – the President of Mazowieckie Province Commission, and from 1820 a speaker of the Kingdom’s Sejm. Rembeliński visited a dozen or so settlements and prepared a project “On creation of textile factories”, that constituted the basis for the decree of 18 September 1820 on the basis of which several towns were transformed into industrial towns. These included: Łódź, Gostynin, Dąbie, Łęczyca, Zgierz and Przedecz.
In Łódź the decree allowed for creating a textile settlement south of the Old Town in 1820, and in 1823, a linen and cotton settlement named Łódka. The old Piotrków route was renamed to Piotrkowska Street, joining the three settlements. The development of Łódź in the first couple of years was slow. It was decisively outrun by the neighbouring Zgierz, located on the Warsaw-Kalisz route, where linen and wool industry started to dominate. But Łódź was soon to become the centre of cotton industry. Its favourable location on Łódka and Bałutka Rivers accelerated the development of the town, the dynamic growth of which took place in 1830-1840s. In 1835-37 the Ludwik Geyer’s “White Factory” appeared in the town, in 282/284 Piotrkowska Street. This was one of the first mechanical cotton spinning-mill in the town (currently it hosts the Textile Industry Museum).
The increasing number of factories and smaller enterprises was followed by an increase in the number of houses and their inhabitants. Among the settlers were the Germans, Poles, Jews and Russians. In 1851 the customs border with Russia was abolished. England abolished its ban on spinning machines exports. In 1866 there was a regular railway connection established, which significantly accelerated the development of Łódź. In 1898 the first electric tram line in the Kingdom of Poland was opened. All these factors gave new opportunities to the Łódź's textile industry. As early as in the 1840s a few large industrial enterprises were established there: Józef Richter’s cotton weaving mill and mechanical cotton spinning mills of Dawid Lande, Ludwik Grohman and Abram Prussak. In the 1850s more factories were established by: Jakub Petters, Szaja Rosenblatt, Franciszek Kinderman and the Łódź “king of cotton” – Karol Scheibler. The development of industry was accompanied by the population increase. Developing industry started to attract craftsmen from smaller towns and manufacturers from the whole country, and even abroad. Simultaneously with inflow of new inhabitants, in the 1870s and 1880s family homes started to be replaced with three- and four-storey houses and tenement houses, usually modelled on the Berlin tenements. At the end of the 19th century a four- and five-storey, high standard city tenements appeared in Łódź, mostly in Piotrkowska Street. They were built in various styles: various forms of historicism, eclecticism and Art Nouveau. The ground floors of these buildings hosted stylish shops, cafés and restaurants. The ground floors were used by famous Łódź companies for their offices. Moreover, there appeared banks, hotels and department stores. So-called “industrial kingdoms” started to emerge in the city as well. These were large industrial complexes, usually having one owner. The most impressive were: the industrial complex of Karol Scheibler, Izrael K. Poznański and Ludwik Grohman.
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