Izrael Poznański's factory in Łódź — a city within the city

From a cloth trade to thirty hectares

Izrael Poznański started out trading cloth and running a small manufactory. The turning point was his purchase of land in 1871 on the western side of the New Town, along Ogrodowa Street, then on the edge of Łódź. Construction ran for twenty years, from 1872 to 1892, to designs by Hilary Majewski, the busiest architect in the city at the time.

By the end of the century the complex covered close to thirty hectares. It was not simply halls and a chimney but a full industrial settlement: a spinning mill, weaving sheds, a bleachery, a dye works, a fabric printing shop, finishing plants, plus a foundry, a gasworks, an engine shed, a fire station, warehouses, the counting house and a railway siding. Output was aimed at the Russian market, to which Łódź then had duty-free access.

Across Ogrodowa stood an estate of workers' tenements that the city called famuły, and nearby the owner built a hospital and a church. His own residence — the palace at Ogrodowa 15, today the Museum of the City of Łódź — closed the arrangement at one end. Combining production, housing and welfare under one management was the rule in nineteenth-century Łódź, but at Poznański's it reached the largest scale.

The spinning mill and the clock gate

The most recognisable building is the spinning mill of 1877–1878: a five-storey block of bare red brick facing Ogrodowa, with a rhythm of tall windows that still conveys the discipline of industrial architecture. Its interiors were adapted for hotel and conference use during the regeneration, while the facades were kept.

The second landmark is the main gatehouse of 1878–1880, topped with a clock. It was reconstructed and still serves as one of the entrances. Original fragments of the gates, the second of the works clocks and bricks bearing makers' stamps went to the Factory Museum, housed in one of the former weaving sheds.

It is the spinning mill and the gate that were given historic monument status in 2015. The regulation of the President of the Republic of Poland of 16 February 2015 created the monument „Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city”, and one of its five components is part of Poznański's factory and residential complex. The site had already entered the heritage register in 1971 and again in 1993.

War, Poltex and the end of production

In September 1939 the German occupiers took over the mill; in 1942 the shareholders were expropriated, the plant passed to German businessmen and, alongside textiles, made aircraft components. On 19 January 1945 it became state property.

Under communist rule the works operated under a series of names, longest as Poltex, and remained one of the city's biggest employers. In 1971 the women weavers went on strike here, one of the most significant labour actions of that decade. Between 1991 and 1998 came liquidation, a creditors' settlement and privatisation; cotton production on this scale never returned.

The site lay empty for several years. Worthless later buildings were cleared between 1999 and 2002, conversion work began in 2003, and the complex opened on 17 May 2006 under the name Manufaktura. The concept came from the London practice Virgile & Stone working with Sud Architectes of Lyon.

What fills the halls today

The regenerated site covers about 27 hectares, nearly nine of them historic factory buildings. At its centre lies a square of more than three hectares with a fountain 300 metres long, a beach in summer and a skating rink in winter — a public space this part of the city had never had.

The most important cultural address is ms2, a branch of the Muzeum Sztuki opened in 2008 in a former weaving shed, showing twentieth- and twenty-first-century art from the collections of one of Europe's oldest museums of modern art. Beside it the Factory Museum explains the mill itself and the work at the looms, and the Experymentarium runs as a science centre.

The pleasure of the place is the contrast between surviving brickwork and new glazed additions. To grasp the scale of Poznański's enterprise, combine the factory with the palace on Ogrodowa and the New Jewish Cemetery on Bracka, where the family mausoleum stands — the largest Jewish tombstone in Europe.

Getting there

• On foot — a quarter of an hour from Plac Wolności at the northern end of Piotrkowska, along Legionów or Ogrodowa; this route passes the Poznański palace.
• By train — about two kilometres west of the underground Łódź Fabryczna station, a similar distance from Łódź Kaliska on the other side.
• By public transport — trams and buses stop on Ogrodowa and Zachodnia, a few minutes' walk from the gates.
• By car — the site sits on the Zachodnia–Legionów axis in the city centre; there are car parks beneath the complex, often full at weekends.

Worth knowing

The complex is large and easy to lose your bearings in, so start at the central square and the clock gate and only then turn into the side passages between the halls — that is where the original brickwork, cast-iron columns and traces of the sidings are visible.

An attentive walk round takes an hour; with the Factory Museum and ms2 allow half a day. The grounds are freely accessible and level, so they work well with a pushchair. The museums set their own closing days and admission rules, worth checking on their sites beforehand.

How to get there and practical info

Location

ul. Ogrodowa, Łódź, Łódź Voivodeship — west of Plac Wolności and the northern end of Piotrkowska

Built

1872–1892 to designs by Hilary Majewski; spinning mill 1877–1878, main gatehouse 1878–1880

Size

close to 30 hectares in its working days; about 27 hectares of regenerated complex today, roughly 9 of them historic buildings

What the works contained

spinning mill, weaving sheds, bleachery, dye works, fabric printing shop, finishing plants, foundry, gasworks, engine shed, fire station, warehouses, counting house, railway siding, workers' estate and the owner's palace

Protection

heritage register from 20 January 1971 with further entries in 1993; part of the historic monument „Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city” under the presidential regulation of 16 February 2015

Inside today

the ms2 art museum in a former weaving shed, the Factory Museum, the Experymentarium science centre, the square with its fountain

Time needed

an hour for the grounds, half a day with the museums

Current hours and tickets

the Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi website, which runs ms2 on the former factory site

When to go