House moved from Mazowiecka 61

Piotrkowska 282

The largest of the houses in Łódź City Culture Park was moved from Mazowiecka 61, previously called Andrzej Wagner street, after the owner of the nearby properties and the brewery located at Kątna street. To this day, the area is commonly referred to as Grembach, though the etymology of this name is unclear. One theory is that it is a Polonised version of the word Grenzbühl, meaning city outskirts. It was a labourers’ district that sprung up in the village of Widzew near Łódź when the industrialist Juliusz Kunitzer built a thread factory there toward the end of 19^th century. With the arrival of the factory, wooden housing for its workers started cropping up in the vicinity. At first, these dwellings were built from scavenged materials, with no access whatsoever to the city’s infrastructure.

This two-storey building with a usable attic was meant as rental housing for the workers of the nearby factories. This simple wooden building featured a frame structure and clapboard walls. The interior design is symmetrical, with hall and stairs located at the centre. The brown façade is decorated only with a moulding separating the storeys and window frames in a contrasting blue colour.

Zdzisław Kowalczyk, who was born and spent his childhood in this house, recently reached out to the Museum. His family, consisting of his parents and grandmother, lived here together in a small room with a ground-floor kitchen. Though there was no running water, Zdzisław has fond memories of living on Mazowiecka street – especially the sense of community with the other residents, as they would spend a lot of time together. The house’s last occupants moved out in the late 1990s.