Land promised again?

Mateusz Zmyślony

16 of February '23

Piotrkowska Street is a phenomenon not only because of its above-average length, its uniqueness is determined by its architecture - for years intensively renovated

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Before the Industrial Revolution, only rich people dressed well. As a result of it - the whole world dressed. The scale of the business was colossal. It is told in Andrzej Wajda's famous film "Promised Land". Indeed, it was just like in the film. Great business was filmed in Lodz at the meeting point of three cultures and two empires. It was important to have access to the entire Russian market (this changed with decisions to establish or abolish customs duties). Close by was the German-Russian border, which resulted in great involvement of German-speaking capital. Jewish and Polish businesses competed with them, and the machinery of the factories was operated by hundreds of thousands of hands of workers and laborers speaking mainly Polish.

Often referred to as the underground cathedral - the Lodz filters in Stoki

photo: Sebastian Glapinski | Platin Studio

Large factories were plentiful here. Next to the textile ones, electromechanical and chemical ones sprouted up. Profitability was influenced by history and politics. In the golden era, Lodz and its surroundings grew rapidly, sucking in more than half a million residents from the four corners of the world. A young, new, modern city was created, planned differently from historical cities. Punctuated by extreme affluence. Different from all the others. Resembling something like a brick gold prospectors' camp (which survives in its entirety to this day) surrounded by a sea of wooden slums (of which no trace remains). Without the normal, classic market, which is the central part of the city. Without a large river on whose banks a classic urban center would be located. But instead with plenty of monumental factories, factory palaces, lavish townhouses and a forest of chimneys to the horizon. A forest that is not there today - the relics of the chimneys after the heyday of the factories were the first to be demolished.

The human masses needed to service all this lived in various conditions. Some in makeshift sheds, some in surrounding villages, some in factory housing estates. After the days of building with bricks came the grand slab. Then the old, eclectic Lodz, the one we know from the vicinity of Piotrkowska Street and partly the old Bałuty, was overgrown with large concrete estates.

The Łódź Fabryczna station is spectacular - it was designed for a future in which traffic will increase many times over

Photo: Sebastian Glapinski | Platin Studio

Because Łódź has had several distinctive eras. After a rapid birth and dynamic maturation, communism took hold after two world wars. The socialist regime was very fond of workers' cities. After chasing away the hated factory owners, factories became state-owned. As in the aforementioned Bielsko, Bydgoszcz or Nowa Huta, built from scratch, the communist regime gave the workers' community the green light for many initiatives previously absent in the city.

Previously, Lodz - a private city, a factory town - was not fortunate in all aspects of urban development. It was like a commercial enterprise - everything was done in it so that it could be more profitable. Necessary concern for the health, fitness and attitude of hundreds of thousands of workers told factory owners to put up hospitals, kindergartens and invest in really necessary infrastructure. But let's not delude ourselves: living conditions in the city were terrible for most people, the bare minimum necessary was provided. The process of city development was brutal. What mattered was the interest of the owners. These - fortunately - had a great need to flaunt their wealth, which gave the city hundreds of magnificent townhouses, palaces, and the factories themselves were built in such a way that to this day they are architectural gems.

The stable of unicorns has become a modern symbol of Lodz, it is not an ordinary streetcar stop....

photo: Aldona Soltysiak

In this setting, however, there was little room for fancies like libraries or universities. At the time of the partitions, Lodz could not count on favoritism from the authorities or locating strategic investments there - Tsarist Russia tried to keep the Polish lands as bad as possible. Fortunately, the ambitions of its own residents, such as Frederick Sellin, soon became apparent. This versatile Lodz local patriot, entrepreneur and cultural animator did his best to make the city a better place. Thanks to people like him - the so-called lodzermensch - numerous sports facilities, city baths and other elements of urban civilization stood in Lodz alongside the Grand Theater. There is no trace of the theater itself, it burned down in 1920.

One of the interesting urban anomalies from that era is the lack of... train connections between Lodz's railroad stations. It's a bit strange that from the Łódź Kaliska station to the Łódź Fabryczna station one had to walk an hour. To this day, this heavily complicates communication in the city and its relations with the outside world. This will finally change in the near future - the construction of a railroad tunnel is underway, which will fix the situation once and for all, by the way explaining the incomprehensible momentum of the empty Łódź Fabryczna station for many (this one is built for future capacity); (designed by the FaAbryczna Consortium consisting of: FBT Pracownia Architektury i Urbanistyki, Tremend, GSBK, Infrares, PPprojekt, Major, KMG; the architecture of the building in 2011-2014 was carried out by SYSTRA, the authors of the conceptual design, as well as construction and detailed designs developed from December 2011 to January 2014 are E. Oskroba, J. Wysocka and M. Nowakowska-Cicio).

One of the best showcases of the metropolis are the events organized here in series, the king among them is the Festival of Light

However, the situation of the absurd lack of rails between stations did not give me peace of mind. Since I haven't found much in the sources, I'll risk my own hypothesis: I'm betting that it was a strategic Tsarist idea, intended to make it more difficult for Russia's enemies to move from west to east - in case of war.

After World War I, Lodz's railroad evil streak continued - an extremely important coal railroad connecting Upper Silesia with the port of Gdynia by a hair's breadth (40 kilometers to be exact) bypassed the city, depriving it of many potential assets for the future.

The multinational, multicultural city of factories had no historical mandate for special treatment in the newly revived Poland. The freedom regained along with the dire socio-economic situation meant a lack of resources to invest in sustainable development. So Lodz's factories produced, the workers harried (actually, more so even the female workers), and the city grew as the locals managed to organize themselves. On the one hand extremely rich, on the other - oriented to maximum exploitation and very dependent on market prosperity, customs duties and economic crises.

One of the best calling cards of the metropolis are the events organized here in series, the king among them is the Festival of Light

World War II added several black years to the city's troubled history. The Lodz ghetto, organized in the poorest and most neglected part of the city, Bałuty, was the first area in occupied Poland completely isolated to separate the Jewish community from the rest of the population (and the second largest, after the Warsaw ghetto).

Litzmannstadt - as the Germans called Lodz - emerged after the war battered, full of wounds, but nevertheless architecturally whole. That's why in the first post-war years Lodz served as a temporary capital - until Warsaw was rebuilt, Lodz buildings housed key resurgent state institutions.