Dawid Prussak Tenement House

A three-storey tenement house at ulica Piotrkowska 49 bears the name of Dawid Prussak, a Łódź manufacturer and philanthropist who owned it from the 1870s. The building was constructed earlier, in the mid-1860s, and acquired its present form through expansion around 1888–1889. It is entered in the municipal register of monuments of Łódź under number 969.

The first tenement house and successive owners

Before the current building was erected, the property was held successively by Franciszek Gitler from 1830, who did not build on the plot; Antoni Scheinert from 1832; Ferdynand Uhmann from 1835, who built a wooden house; and then Marcin Langhoff, Fryderyk Sperling and Traugott Ernest Halang from 1849. It was Halang who, around 1865, built the first single-storey front tenement house, visible in a photograph by E. Stumman from the second half of the 1870s.

Dawid Prussak, manufacturer and philanthropist

Dawid Prussak was born in 1845 in Drobina and died on 9 January 1909 in Łódź. He was married to Rebeka Lewi and had two sons and two daughters. He ran a factory producing flannel and cotton goods, and in 1893 built a spinning mill and woollen weaving works at ulica Zielona 13, employing 140 workers. He acquired the property at Piotrkowska in the 1870s, and in 1878–1879 secured the removal of the city municipality of Łódź from the mortgage on the property as part of a ground rent redemption.

Charitable activity

Prussak established a loan fund that provided interest-free loans to small merchants and craftsmen. He financed the construction of a hospital, and his heirs donated money in his memory for charitable purposes. He was a co-founder of the Wilker Szul synagogue and the Jewish Charity Society in Łódź, and also served on the board of the Jewish municipal authority.

Expansion and tenants

Building documents from 1888 already list the building as a two-storey tenement house. Around 1888–1889 it was expanded by a further storey, and in 1900 it underwent renovation. In 1896–1901 the building housed the warehouse of the Władysław Baruch Industrial Joint-Stock Company, until its bankruptcy was declared in 1901. From 1928 it housed the administrative office of the textile factory of Abram Ickowicz.

Practical information

• Address: ulica Piotrkowska 49, Śródmieście
• Getting there: on foot along the Piotrkowska pedestrian mall or by tram to stops in the centre of Łódź
• What to expect: a historic tenement house viewed from the pedestrian mall, near the Izrael Poznański Tenement House, the former inn of Bartosz Wencl and the Fryderyk Müller House