Księży Młyn in Łódź — a mill, a mansion and a workers' estate in one block

The mill that named the district

The name is four centuries older than the industry. A mill belonging to the parish priest of Łódź stood on the upper course of the Jasień stream, recorded in 1428 and 1521; in German the place was called Pfaffendorf. The village administrator's mill worked alongside it.

In 1823 the authorities placed three mills — the administrator's, the priest's and Lamus — under municipal management so their water power could be put to industrial use. The first to do so was Christian Friedrich Wendisch of Chemnitz, whose large spinning mill went up between 1827 and 1830. Karl Friedrich Moes and then Theodor Krusche followed him.

That first factory ended in a fire in 1870. The burnt-out works and the estate around them were bought the same year by Karol Wilhelm Scheibler — and everything you can see at Księży Młyn today begins with that purchase.

Scheibler and a scale Łódź had not seen

Scheibler arrived in Łódź in 1854, by way of Ozorków, carrying a Belgian passport issued in Monschau. A year later he started his own first spinning mill at the Water Market (now Plac Zwycięstwa) beside Źródliska Park, driven by a forty-horsepower steam engine. That was the city's first planned factory-and-housing development — the idea he would repeat at Księży Młyn on a far larger scale.

His firm became the biggest textile business in the Kingdom of Poland. It covered over five hundred hectares, roughly fourteen per cent of the city's area at the time — not a factory inside a city but a city arranged around a factory.

On 18 November 1921 the Scheibler works merged with the factory of Ludwik Grohman, their neighbour to the east, creating the largest textile enterprise in Poland of those years.

The famuły, and how a mill worker lived

The heart of the complex is the workers' estate: two rows of identical, unrendered houses on either side of Księży Młyn street. In Łódź they are known as famuły. The semi-detached blocks repeat exactly — the same stairwells, the same windows, the same rhythm along the whole street. Behind them run yards with rows of storage sheds and small gardens.

The flats were cramped and had no bathrooms of their own, but they offered more than a worker could then rent in town. Building went in stages: around 1865 at the Water Market, during the 1870s beside the Księży Młyn spinning mill, the best-known terrace between 1886 and 1890, with further houses on Emilii and Przędzalniana streets later.

Around the flats Scheibler put up everything an estate needed: the company shop, the konsum, in 1882; a fire station in 1883–1884; St Anne's hospital in 1884; and a free school for workers' children. The logic was straightforward: people living at the factory gate arrived on time and changed jobs less often.

The spinning mill and its sidings

The largest building is the cotton spinning mill on what is now Tymienieckiego Street — two hundred and seven metres long, which made it the longest industrial structure in Łódź. The design is often attributed to Hilary Majewski, though scholars treat that attribution with serious doubt, so it is safer to credit Scheibler's own building office.

A network of railway sidings about five kilometres long tied the works to the Łódź factory line, opened on 17 November 1865. Cotton came in by wagon straight onto the site and finished cloth left the same way, which meant Księży Młyn had no need of the city's streets at all.

It is precisely that completeness — factory, owner's residence and workers' estate in one legible arrangement — that puts Księży Młyn among the best preserved examples of the layout in Poland and in Europe.

Three palaces and one villa

The Scheibler family left several residences in Łódź, and each has a different occupant now. The palace at the Water Market, built in 1865, holds the Museum of Cinematography. The one on Piotrkowska Street belongs to the Lodz University of Technology.

Closest to the estate, though, is Edward Herbst's villa of 1875, on the corner of Przędzalniana and Emilii. Herbst was Scheibler's son-in-law, married to his daughter Matylda, and his house shows the other side of the same block: dining room, drawing rooms and garden, a few dozen metres from the workers' terraces. The villa operates as the Księży Młyn Residence, a branch of the Łódź Museum of Art.

The complex also takes in Źródliska Park, the oldest park in the city, next to Scheibler's first factory, with the palm house across the road. You can walk from the palace through the workers' houses to the spinning mill in one go without leaving the old estate.

A restoration running since 2012

After Łódź's textile industry collapsed, the estate decayed for a long time. Renewal began in 2012 and has proceeded in stages: the first thoroughly restored five buildings, including the distinctive wooden house at 91 Przędzalniana, and created thirteen artists' studios. Later stages covered more than a dozen further residential buildings, the yards and Fabryczna Street, with municipal flats and service premises installed in the houses.

Księży Młyn is therefore not an open-air museum but a normally inhabited estate you walk through as you would any street. It is worth remembering when photographing the yards: people live behind those windows.

The complex is on the heritage register and forms part of the Historic Monument "Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city", designated by order of the President of Poland on 16 February 2015; the order lists part of the Karol Wilhelm Scheibler complex among the protected areas. Efforts to secure a UNESCO listing have been under way for years, and in 2016 the National Bank of Poland put the estate on a commemorative coin in its "Discover Poland" series.

Getting there

• By public transport — the nearest point is Plac Zwycięstwa, the former Water Market, with tram stops; from there it is a few minutes through Źródliska Park to the estate.
• By train — from the underground Łódź Fabryczna station it is just under two kilometres south-east, so either a walk or one tram ride.
• On foot from Piotrkowska — head out along Tymienieckiego Street from the middle of Piotrkowska, passing old factory buildings on the way; about two kilometres.
• By car — the estate's streets are narrow and lived in, so it is wiser to leave the car at Plac Zwycięstwa or on Tymienieckiego and walk in.

Worth knowing

Forty minutes covers the estate itself; add the Herbst villa, Źródliska Park and the palm house and you have half a day. The best order is park, then workers' houses, then the villa — the contrast between a worker's flat and a manufacturer's home lands hardest when you see both within the same hour.

The light for photographs is best in late afternoon, when the sun drops into the axis of Księży Młyn street and pulls the colour out of the bare brick. The paving is uneven and the yards are not always open, so most of the walking is along the street.

Księży Młyn joins up with the other chapters of industrial Łódź: Geyer's White Factory at the southern end of Piotrkowska, Manufaktura in Izrael Poznański's mill, and the EC1 power station. Scheibler is the one in that set who built not only a factory but the life around it.

How to get there and practical info

Location

Księży Młyn, Przędzalniana, Emilii and Tymienieckiego streets, Łódź, Łódź Voivodeship — south-east of Piotrkowska

Origins of the site

a mill belonging to the parish priest of Łódź, recorded in 1428 and 1521; the mills passed to municipal management for industrial use in 1823

Who built the complex

Karol Wilhelm Scheibler, who bought the burnt-out works in 1870 and expanded them from the 1870s onwards

What it includes

the workers' estate, a 207-metre spinning mill, the company shop (1882), fire station (1883–1884), St Anne's hospital (1884), a school, the Herbst villa (1875) and Źródliska Park

Scale of the business

over 500 hectares, about 14 per cent of the city's area at the time; some 5 kilometres of railway sidings

Heritage status

heritage register; part of the Historic Monument "Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city", by order of the President of Poland of 16 February 2015

Time needed

forty minutes for the estate, half a day with the villa and the park

Current opening times and tickets

website of the Museum of Art in Łódź, which runs the Księży Młyn Residence

When to go