Janasz Warszawski Tenement House

The frontage at Piotrkowska 114 is a tenement house from 1893, standing immediately next to an identical property at number 116, where the same owner had built an earlier building – Janasz Warszawski Tenement House at number 116. Both frontages can be viewed from the promenade as part of the dense, industrial rental housing that characterises the middle section of the street.

From Jan Gottfryd Hähnsch to Rachela Eisert

The plot at today's number 114 bore mortgage number 535, previously listed as plot number 80. In July 1834, it came into the hands of weaver Jan Gottfryd Hänsch, who was obligated to run a factory producing cotton goods on three looms and to build a wooden house. Later owners in the nineteenth century were Friedrich Wolf from around 1840, Adam Schtrobel, and from 1856 the couple Wilhelm May and Joanna Rachela Eisert. From the 1870s onwards, Rachela Eisert was the sole owner, purchasing the land outright in the middle of that decade.

The 1893 frontage and Janasz Warszawski's properties

At the turn of the 1880s and 1890s, the property came into the hands of Janasz Warszawski, who was already owner of the neighbouring property at number 116. The three-storey tenement building at number 114 was built according to a design by architect Ignacy Markiewicz from 1893, ten years after the earlier frontage at number 116. Markiewicz designed several dozen tenement houses on Piotrkowska, including the frontage of the Ramiszewski Family Tenement House at number 121 from 1884. On the adjoining properties 114 and 116, Warszawski constructed numerous residential, commercial and industrial buildings during this decade, including a factory building on the side of what is now Sienkiewicza Street and a separate market hall between the two properties, erected in 1896–1899 according to a design by Franciszek Chełmiński. It is this hall, rather than the frontage at number 114, that is listed in the register of monuments.

Factories, workshops and subsequent owners

At Piotrkowska 114, various enterprises operated during the industrial period, including a printing works run by Karol Reichert, a wadding factory run by Rubin Bloszten, a furniture factory run by Robert Szulc, a mechanical hosiery mill run by Pinkus Hollender, and a mechanical ribbon factory run by Szmul Orbach. Shared with the property at number 116 were a hand hosiery mill operated by G. Szner and Company and a metal grinding workshop run by Menachem Wosk. Around 1904, probably following Janasz Warszawski's death, the property came into the hands of the company Landau and Co. In the early second decade of the twentieth century, both properties belonged to the couple Chana Szyfra and Abram Szlama Freind, and the 1920 house register still lists this couple as owners.

In the vicinity

Several dozen metres further along on the same side of the street stands the Alberto Böhme Tenement House, and a little closer to the city centre the Jakub Wojdysławski Tenement House. This entire section of Piotrkowska was built in a similar period and with a similar layout: a front building on the street, with factory buildings behind it deeper within the plot.

Practical information

• Address: Piotrkowska 114, Łódź
• Getting there: by tram or bus to stops on Piotrkowska, then on foot via the promenade
• What to expect: a historic front tenement building viewed from outside, surrounded by other nineteenth-century rental tenements