The city’s main thoroughfare is Ulica Piotrkowska, which is several
kilometres long. Its most important section stretches from Plac
Wolności to Aleje Piłudskiego. It is Poland’s longest
pedestrianized street and is lined with shops, cafés, restaurants and
banks.
Behind the town houses, the brick factory buildings still stand, many of them
now converted into stores. A noteworthy example is the one at Piotrkowska 137/139 , built in 1907 for the cotton manufacturer
Juliusz Kindermann by the architect Gustav Landau-Gutenteger, and featuring
a gold mosaic frieze depicting an allegory of trade. In Plac Wolności is a
Monument to Tadeusz Kościuszko of 1930, rebuilt after
its destruction in 1939 and a favourite meeting place for the city’s youth.
Beside it stands the modest Neo-Classical town hall , which
dates from 1827, when the foundations of industry were being laid in
Łódź.
The city’s cemeteries – the Catholic and Protestant
cemeteries in Ulica Srebrzyńska and the Jewish cemetery in Ulica Bracka –
contain some exceptionally interesting monuments that bear witness to the
variety of cultures and nationalities that existed in Łódź before 1939, when
it was a city with one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. The
grand mausoleums were built for local industrialists, who before 1914 were
the wealthiest people in the Russian empire.
The Leopold Kindermann Villa at Ulica Wólczańska 31/33 is
another Art Nouveau building designed by Gustav Landau-Gutenteger. It was
built in 1902 and features fine stained-glass windows. Today it houses an
art gallery.
At the turn of the 20th century the townscape of Łódź was dominated by the
industrialists’ palaces. The finest surviving examples are the residences of
the textile factory-owner Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznański, at Ogrodowa 15 and
Gdańska 36, and a remarkable palace at Plac Zwycięstwa 1 that rivals the one
built by Karol Scheibler, the merchant celebrated as the “cotton king” of
Poznań.
