Ewald Kern Palace

At Piotrkowska 179, on the route between the city centre and plac Niepodległości [Independence Square], stands a multi-storey residence built in the late 19th century for industrialist Ewald Kern. The building today is primarily associated with the seat of scientific institutions, but the form of the palace and the details of its elevation recall the time when it was built as a private house for a factory owner.

Residence of an iron foundry owner

Before Ewald Kern, the plot belonged from 1832 to the Birke family - first Franciszek senior, then from 1856 his son Franciszek junior - until the early 1890s. Ewald Kern, a Łódź resident of Austrian origin, ran the second largest iron foundry in Łódź and a mechanical loom factory. He commissioned a house on Piotrkowska, constructed in 1896–1898 according to a design by Franciszek Chełmiński, in the eclectic style combining Renaissance and classical motifs.

Successive owners of the property

Already in 1903, following Kern's financial difficulties, the property passed into the hands of the married couple Ida Amalia née Jäckel and Karol Rudolf Eisner. The house register from 1920 lists Alma Butschkat as the owner, and in 1930 the property was purchased by Powszechne Towarzystwo Handlowo-Przemysłowe [General Commercial and Industrial Society], formerly operating as F. Greenwood Joint-Stock Company.

From library to seat of learning

In the early 1980s, the building, previously used by a pedagogical library and severely neglected, was handed over to the Łódź Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences. After a comprehensive renovation, the palace became the seat of the PAN [Polish Academy of Sciences] branch and the Łódź Scientific Society, and it continues to serve this function today, so the interiors are not open for casual visiting. For a time the building also housed the PAN hotel with a restaurant, where professors from Łódź universities - the University of Łódź, the Medical Academy, the Technical University and the art schools - met at the billiard table. In 1971, the building was entered in the register of historic monuments under number A/76.

Piotrkowska in this area

Continuing towards plac Niepodległości, one passes further 19th-century factory owners' residences, among them the villa of Alfred Jarisch.

On the other side of the street stands the tenement house of Florian Jarisch, and closer to the city centre one can see the tenement house of the Jakubowicz family.

The flow of pedestrians on the pavement also draws attention to sculptures placed along the street, such as the monument to Ferdinand the Magnificent.

Practical information

• Address: ulica Piotrkowska 179, Łódź.
• Getting there: by tram or bus to stops in the area of plac Niepodległości, then on foot along Piotrkowska.
• What to expect: an administrative building of scientific institutions, viewed from the street, with no access to the interiors.