A tenement at Piotrkowska 78 where pianist Artur Rubinstein spent his childhood; since 2000 a bronze Rubinstein's Piano monument has stood in front of it, part of the Gallery of Great Łódź Figures.
The tenement at Piotrkowska 78 stands behind the former factory buildings, and just in front of its façade, on the pavement of the pedestrian mall, sits a bronze pianist on a piano. This is one of those addresses in central Łódź where the history of the property and the history of the monument intertwine into one story, though they concern two different things.
On this plot, registered under mortgage number 515, a wooden house still stood in the 1830s. The land changed hands several times, successively belonging to Franciszek Zosel, the Wolanek family, Karol Fryderyk Michel and Karol Teodor Jezierski. The brick, two-storey front tenement was built only in 1880 according to a design by Hilary Majewski. Two years later, Edward Creutzburg designed the raising of the building from the front, which was never realised, as well as a two-storey spinning mill and outbuildings in the courtyard.
The company Rubinstein and Kałuszyner operating at this address went bankrupt in 1884. In the house tariff from 1888, H. Wawelberg appears as the owner, and later that same year the property probably passed into the hands of Hugo Wulffsohn. After his death in 1905, his children inherited the front, residential part of the property: sons Zygmunt and Wilhelm and daughters Lina and Julia. Around the same time, Jakub Szmulowicz, then owner of the neighbouring property at number 80, now known as the tenement of many enterprises, bought the rear, factory part.
Arthur Rubinstein, one of the most famous pianists of the twentieth century, born in Łódź in 1887, spent his childhood years at Piotrkowska 78. It was precisely this connection to the place that later provided grounds for placing a monument to the artist in front of the building.
In front of the tenement stands a bronze monument titled "Rubinstein's Piano", unveiled on 23 September 2000 during the World Congress of Łódź People. The sculptor is Marcel Szytenchelm, and the cast was created in the workshop of Artproduct Studio in Poznań. The monument depicts a pianist sitting at a piano with hands on the keyboard; the raised lid of the instrument resembles a bird's wing, and next to it lies a treble clef. The sculpture is part of the Gallery of Great Łódź Residents, a set of outdoor bronze monuments placed on the pavements of Piotrkowska Street, dedicated to people connected with the city. The form of the sculpture aroused controversy; the Rubinstein family, including his daughter Eva, opposed its unveiling, considering it unworthy of her father's memory. Originally, the monument played fragments of classical works when a coin was inserted, but the mechanism was disabled following objections concerning copyright.
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