A. Starke Tenement House

A. Starke Tenement House stands at Piotrkowska 102, opposite the J. Hofman Tenement House and several dozen metres from the Tuwim Bench. It is one of those Łódź properties on the main street which in the 19th century combined residential and factory functions - a front house stood here alongside production buildings in the courtyard.

From weaver to factory owner

The plot at the present address Piotrkowska 102, in the old mortgage numbering no. 527, was taken over in 1833 by weaver Franciszek Müller. He was obliged to build a house and run a cotton textile factory, in accordance with the building regulations of the then Łódź weaver settlement. Subsequent owners were Ehrenfried Kriegel from 1838, August Hüttmann junior from 1855, and Alojzy Balle, who took over the property in the late 1850s and purchased the land outright in the 1870s.

Factory buildings in the courtyard

Rudolf Miciński's plan from 1873 shows a brick left-hand factory annex already on this plot. At least from the early 1880s the property was owned by Albert Starke, who erected new factory buildings in the courtyard and replaced the wooden front house with a two-storey tenement house. In the early 1890s the property passed into the hands of the Juliusz Heinzel Joint-stock Company.

Businesses at this address

At number 102, over successive decades, there operated a wholesale store of colonial and dye goods of the firm Karol W. Gehlig, a factory of woollen kerchiefs owned by Maksymilian Szyffer, the exchange office of Józef Lewin and partners, the press advertising bureau of L. and E. Matzl and partners, and the factory warehouse of the Pabianice Reformed Shoe Factory. Such a mixture of trade, small-scale manufacturing and financial services was typical of Piotrkowska at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

What remains uncertain

In the immediate vicinity stands the Salomon Baharier Tenement House with richer, documented façade decoration.

Practical information

• Address: Piotrkowska 102, Łódź
• Getting there: by tram or bus to stops on Piotrkowska, then on foot along the pedestrian zone
• What to expect: a historic front tenement house viewed from outside, surrounded by other historic tenement houses of the pedestrian zone