Łódź Urban Culture Park — two streets of wooden Łódź

An idea that waited fifty years

Wooden Łódź disappeared faster than the brick city. Around 1900 whole streets of workers' housing were built of logs and planks; decades of demolition left single survivors wedged between tenements. Gathering them in one place was already on the mind of Krystyna Kondratiuk, founder and first director of the Central Museum of Textiles, which had been settling into Geyer's White Factory since the 1950s.

The plan waited until the twenty-first century. A design competition was decided in 2002 and won by two architects from Wrocław, Anita Luniak and Teresa Mromlińska. Construction ran from September 2006 to May 2008, and the site opened to visitors on 30 September 2008. More than half the cost came from the European Regional Development Fund.

In its opening year the Łódź branch of the Society of Polish Town Planners gave the scheme a special award for the best-managed public space in the region, in the category of newly created spaces. That is an unusual prize for an open-air museum, but it catches the point: rather than scattering cottages across a meadow, the architects laid out two streets, complete with lamps, wells and street-name plates.

What stands here, and where it came from

• A larch chapel from Nowosolna — built around the middle of the nineteenth century as a Protestant meeting house in what was then a village and is now part of the Widzew district; walls of single beams, a clock in the front gable. It no longer serves as a church, but the interior keeps its original fittings
• A summer villa from Ruda Pabianicka — a reminder of the years when Łódź families went a few kilometres out of town for the summer
• Five craftsmen's houses — close to a century old, moved from Wólczańska, Żeromskiego, Kopernika and Mazowiecka streets
• The "wooden tenement" — a two-storey house from Mazowiecka 61, proof that timber here was not only for single-storey cottages
• A tram waiting room from Zgierz — dating from about 1901, from the terminus of the Łódź narrow-gauge electric suburban line on Kilińskiego Square
• "Three Bears" — a sculpture unveiled on 25 November 2012, World Teddy Bear Day, part of a city trail honouring characters from the Łódź animation studio Se-ma-for

The exhibition that renamed the place

Until 2020 this was the Open-Air Museum of Łódź Wooden Architecture. The name changed because the story did: five of the wooden houses now hold the permanent exhibition "Łódź Microhistories. Human Microhistories", which runs through the history of the multicultural textile city from the 1820s to 1989 — seen through residents' daily lives rather than production figures.

The script was built from family memories, diaries and interviews with people from Łódź. Each house has its own small exhibition and its own protagonists, set beside reconstructed interiors: a single room where a whole family slept, a kitchen, a workshop. Other buildings hold a weaving room, a tailor's shop and a machine-embroidery workshop, the equipment most adults in this city once worked at.

It holds together because the houses are not scenery: these are the buildings where a dozen or more people really did live on one floor. A visit usually takes under an hour and has a completely different rhythm from the machine halls of the White Factory across the yard.

Two streets, two ways in

The layout is deliberately urban rather than rural. The main lane runs from the east wing of the White Factory towards Reymont Park, with the craftsmen's houses facing each other along it like an ordinary street frontage. A cross lane drops towards Milionowa street.

There are two entrances. One is from Piotrkowska, through the Central Museum of Textiles, which owns the park as an integral part of itself; this is how most visitors arrive. The other is from Milionowa, handier if you are coming from the south or out of Reymont Park.

Protection

The park sits inside the Ludwik Geyer factory and residential complex, and therefore inside the Monument of History "Łódź — the multicultural landscape of an industrial city", recognised by presidential regulation on 16 February 2015 and in force from 7 March that year.

The relocated buildings are monuments taken out of their original setting, so protection covers the ensemble as a whole: White Factory, courtyard and timber housing together. It is visited together with the museum rather than as a separate stop across town.

Getting there

• By tram — lines along Piotrkowska and Pabianicka stop right by the White Factory
• On foot down Piotrkowska — over four kilometres from Plac Wolności along the full length of the street, and worth the walk in itself
• By car — approach from Milionowa or Piotrkowska; the area is inside the municipal parking zone
• Nearby — the Central Museum of Textiles in the same complex, with Reymont Park and Geyer's classicist manor a few minutes further on

Before you go

Saving the park for the end of a long factory visit is the usual mistake, because by then nobody wants to read. The exhibition inside the houses lives on detail — letters, photographs, objects kept for three generations — and it rewards a slow pace. Start with the wooden streets and finish in the halls.

With children this is one of the easier museums in Łódź: everything is at ground level, the distances are short, and there are places to sit between the houses. Just remember the lanes are open to the sky, so in heat or rain it pays to alternate between outside and in. The "Three Bears" sculpture, inevitably, is the thing children find first.

How to get there and practical info

Location

Łódź, at the Central Museum of Textiles, ul. Piotrkowska 282; second entrance from Milionowa street

Opened

30 September 2008; known until 2020 as the Open-Air Museum of Łódź Wooden Architecture

Design

Anita Luniak and Teresa Mromlińska, competition decided in 2002

Highlights

the larch chapel from Nowosolna, the summer villa from Ruda Pabianicka, five craftsmen's houses, the wooden tenement from Mazowiecka, the tram waiting room from Zgierz

Permanent exhibition

"Łódź Microhistories. Human Microhistories" in five houses, covering 1820 to 1989

Protection

part of the Geyer complex inside the Monument of History of 16 February 2015

Time needed

about an hour for the park, half a day with the White Factory

Current hours and tickets

Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź

When to go