Considered the first Art Nouveau tenement house in Łódź, with a dome topped by a floral ornament and a former synagogue in its courtyard.
The tenement at Piotrkowska 43 is considered the first Art Nouveau tenement in Łódź's architecture. It stands between the Kamienica Roberta Weyraucha at number 41 and the Dom Rafała Sachsa at number 44, at the level of a square which before the war was known for bustling trade.
Andrzej Matz probably purchased the plot comprising today's numbers 41 and 43 in the early 1840s, and following his death in 1854 the southern part, namely number 43, passed to his son Fryderyk Matz. Around 1868 the owner became Antoni Wesołowski, one of the few Poles owning a plot on Piotrkowska at that time. This was an unusual case: at the turn of the 1860s and 1870s only nine of the 296 plots along Piotrkowska belonged to Poles, and on the stretch between Nowy Rynek and present-day Zielona and Narutowicza streets, only two. The subsequent owners, the Weichselfisch family, constructed a two-storey front tenement in the mid-1870s.
In 1901-1902, when the owner was Oszer, also known as Oskar, Kohn, director and later proprietor of Widzewska Manufaktura, the front building received a new Art Nouveau façade designed by Gustaw Landau-Gutenteger. The elevation features a dome crowned with a floral ornament and window frames resembling tree trunks. The tenement is registered in the heritage register under numbers ZS-2/27, registered on 8 July 1964, and A/27, registered on 20 January 1971.
A synagogue once stood in the building's courtyard, and in the tenement itself various organisations operated including a Mutual Credit Society and a reading room. In October 1891 announcements appeared of the opening at Piotrkowska of a branch of E. Wedel's chocolate factory, which was indeed opened at number 43. House tariffs from 1912-1920 list Estera and Abram Jakub Reissmann as owners.
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