Bechtold Family Tenement House

The tenement house at Piotrkowska 22 stands on the main frontage of the city-centre pedestrian mall, some fifteen steps from the junction with Więckowskiego. The Classicist, three-storey structure with a triangular pediment and Tuscan pilasters belongs to the oldest buildings on this stretch of the street, erected in the 19th century when industrial Łódź was only beginning to develop.

The plot before industrialisation

The land at what is now number 22 was originally part of a larger property numbered 256 in the land register, which also encompassed the neighbouring number 24. On Józef Lenartowski's map of 1849, a single-storey wooden house still stood in the central part of the plot. From around 1827, the land was owned by Marcin Meier, a blacksmith and one of the first settlers of the emerging industrial city of Łódź.

Division of the property and construction of the tenement house

By contract in February 1864, Meier sold the property to his married daughters, Salomea and Maria Matylda, who divided the plot into a northern half, now number 22, and a southern half, now number 24. In March 1865, the Bechtold brothers submitted a declaration to build two brick, multi-storey front houses with façades, covered in tile, measuring 74 feet in length, 48 feet in width and 31 feet in height. The declaration was approved in October 1865, and the tenement house was erected in the second half of the 1860s. The façade is closed by a triangular pediment, the elevation is divided by Tuscan pilasters and cornices above the windows of the first floor, and the entrance leads through a semicircular opening above which an iron balcony was mounted. A design for extending the building by another storey, prepared in 1893 by architect Ignacy Stebelski, was never realised.

The Bechtold family and subsequent owners

From the 1890s onwards, the property was run by the sons of the first owner, brothers Henryk junior and Herman Bechtold. The house register of 1920 lists the successors of Herman Bechtold as proprietors, showing that the property remained in family hands for several decades.

Trade and services in the tenement house

The ground floor and first floor were let out for shops and offices. From 1882, Józef Gebl's pharmacy operated here; a year later, Abram Beder's bookshop opened. The Singer and PFAFF companies, sewing machine manufacturers, had their representatives in the building, and in 1914 it housed the headquarters of the Jewish Union of Hairdressers. In the 1920s, the Arkadia cinema operated in the building, one of many small cinemas that were then opening on Piotrkowska.

Protection as a monument

The tenement house is registered as a historical monument under number 35/66, by decision of 18 March 1966. It is adjacent to the Landau family tenement house at number 23 and to the Majer Kestenberg tenement house at number 24, and a few steps further on, at number 25, stands the Belin family tenement house.

Practical information

• address: ul. Piotrkowska 22, Łódź
• access: on foot via the pedestrian mall or by tram to stops near Wolności Square or Więckowskiego; the street is closed to traffic
• what to expect: view from the pedestrian mall side, Classicist façade with pediment and iron balcony, occupied tenement house, no access to interiors