An eclectic tenement at Piotrkowska 5, near plac Wolności, with a facade blending Renaissance, Baroque and Empire motifs; named after wool manufacturer Abraham Prussak, owner of the property from 1870.
The tenement house at Piotrkowska 5 stands in a row of buildings near Plac Wolności, on the odd-numbered side of the street, a few steps from the intersection with aleja Kościuszki. The present-day eclectic building replaced an earlier single-storey wooden house and is associated with the name of wool manufacturer Abraham Prussak, though its history reaches back several decades earlier.
The plot under the present address, marked in the records with mortgage number 282, was taken over in 1825 by cloth merchant Piotr Radke. Five years later, brewer Fryderyk Langhoff purchased the property. Only in November 1870 did Langhoff's heirs sell the premises to spouses Taubie and Abraham Prussak, and a year later construction began on a two-storey front tenement house. Abraham Prussak, who lived from 1832 to 1884, operated a hand-operated wool products factory in the outbuildings in the courtyard. After his death, his sons moved production to ulica Gdańska.
From July 1887, a bookshop and antiquarian shop run by Szlama Mittler operated in the tenement house, probably located at this address already earlier, from the 1870s onwards. This is one of the few specific tenants that could be established for this property from the period before the First World War.
After Abraham Prussak's death, the property passed to his daughter Flora, who appears in documents as Flora voto Rappaport. The 1920 house tariff lists Fajga Rappaport as the owner. The construction of the front tenement house is most often dated to 1871, although some studies give a broader date of the second half of the nineteenth century, with a suggestion of the 1850s.
The front elevation combines elements of Renaissance, Baroque and Empire style. The ground floor and storeys are articulated by pilasters topped with Corinthian capitals, the windows on the first floor have decorative frames with triangular pediments, and the windows on the second floor feature palmette motifs. The tenement house is registered in the list of immovable monuments of the province under number A/62 by virtue of a decision dated 20 January 1971, and also in the municipal register of monuments in Łódź under number 920.
After the Second World War, the original decorative shopfronts on the ground floor were replaced with ordinary shop windows. The building housed, among other things, the headquarters of Łódzki Bank Depozytowy and a tourist cooperative established in 1964. Earlier, in the city address book from 1937–39, the same bank and several trading companies and medical offices were listed at this address. A few dozen metres further along, at Piotrkowska 2/2a, stands the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit.
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