Belin Family Tenement House

The tenement house at Piotrkowska 25 stands between the Landau family tenement and a house from the 1870s numbered 27. In archival documents the family of the first owners appears as Bellin, in other records also as Belin.

Shared plot with neighbouring property

The land under the present number 25 originally formed part of a larger plot number 200, recorded from 1850 under mortgage number 273, which also included the neighbouring number 23. On Józef Lenartowski's plan from 1849 there stood a single-storey wooden house.

The Bellin brothers and construction of the tenement house

In May 1867 the married couple Franciszka and Teresa Müller sold the southern part of the property, that is the present number 25, to brothers Jakub Majer and Nuta Bellin. A year later, in 1868, the Bellin brothers erected a brick, single-storey outbuilding, and the front tenement house was built most likely around the same time. From at least the 1880s onwards the Bellin family also owned the neighbouring property at present-day Więckowskiego 3, which connected perpendicularly with the property at Piotrkowska 25.

Sender Dyszkin's shop

For nearly forty years, from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until the outbreak of the Second World War, a shop selling kosher cold meats operated at this address, run by Sender Dyszkin, one of many Jewish food shops conducted at Piotrkowska at that time.

Maurycy Spokorny's pharmacy

In 1892 Maurycy Spokorny opened a pharmacy at this address, having previously, in the years 1890-1892, run one at Piotrkowska 22. For the pharmacy's needs the windows and doors of the premises in the left part of the tenement house were then rebuilt, and this reconstruction has survived to the present day. Spokorny, who lived in the years 1859-1917 and was the son-in-law of Ludwik Friedländer, studied pharmacy in the years 1880-1884 at the Imperial University of Warsaw and obtained the title of provisor. Besides the pharmacy he also ran a factory of dressing materials on the former Juliusza Street, now Dowborczyków, where the factory building no longer exists. Spokorny's partner in this factory was Otto Wilhelm Thienemann, who after a few years took over the works as sole owner.

Neighbours on the pedestrian mall

The building is adjacent to the Landau family tenement house numbered 23 and stands not far from the Bechtold family tenement house numbered 22 and the Majer Kestenberg tenement house numbered 24.

Practical information

• address: ul. Piotrkowska 25, Łódź
• access: on foot along the pedestrian mall or by tram to stops in the Plac Wolności [Freedom Square] area; the street is closed to vehicle traffic
• what to expect: a rental tenement house with preserved shop front renovation from 1892; external view only; no access to interiors or courtyard