Łódź is located in central Poland and is the fourth-largest city in the country. For hundreds of years it was a small town, before the first quarter of the 19th century when there was a massive industrialization program and transformation of the town to a large industrial center.
15th to 19th century
Łódź itself, called Łódka, existed already in the 12th century, but the first records of this agricultural settlement date back to 1332. It was first a prince's village, but then it came under the control of the Włocławek bishops. It happened in 1332 based on the decision of Władysław the Hunchback, Duke of Łęczyca.
On July 1423 King Władysław II Jagiełło awarded Łódź with city rights. Up to that point it was a village under the ownership of Kujawy Bishop. The term 'city' applies to the legal/administrative status of the local authority and not to the number of residents. For hundreds of years Łódź remained a small town consisting of no more than 1,000 people.
The market square was probably marked out in 1414 during the founding of the city on the initiative of the Włocławek bishops. In 1423, when granting municipal rights, King Władysław II Jagiełło authorized the "weekly market every Wednesday and yearly twice a year". A wooden town hall was built on the market square, later destroyed in unknown circumstances. Another one, created in 1585, survived until the 18th century. The market was re-regulated in 1821 and gradually built up with tenements.
At the beginning of the 15th century there were fifteen villages in today's boundaries of Łódź. There were forests around. As majority of the then small commercial and agricultural towns, it was a market and an inn for a dozen or so neighboring villages. Also, like most cities in central Poland, it never had walls or and was an open city.
In 1561, the residents of Łódź obtained a construction permit for the town hall, but it was not until 1585 that a contract was concluded with the townsman Michał Doczkałowicz for its construction. He fulfilled his promise and erected a wooden building, for which he obtained the right to use one of the rooms as an inn.
The settlement of Łódź was at the Piotrków route towards Piotrków Trybunalski and served the customs chamber on the Ostroga River. This chamber belonged to the king, but it was rented by the archbishop of Gniezno. However, he allowed all customs duties to be collected by the bishop of Włocławek and he was supposed to pay the lease to the king.Chrzanowski, Kanty. "Historia Łodzi do 1865 roku"
It is near this settlement that the oldest parish of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was created in Łódź. Its origins date back to the fourteenth century. It is believed that it was erected between 1364 and 1371 by the Archbishop of Gniezno Jarosław Bogoria Skotnicki and until 1885 it was the only parish in Łódź. Such villages, which later became districts incorporated to the city, such as Bałuty, Doły or Radogoszcz belonged to it. The first priest of this parish was Father Piotr Śliwka.
The brick church standing on Church Square is the third temple in this place. The first of the wooden churches was built in the fourteenth century, when the parish was established. The second, three times the size of the old one was built between 1765 and 1768. This was done at the behest of Włocławek's bishop Antoni Ostrowski.
Almost opposite the settlement of Lodz, around 1410 the village of Ostroga was established. It was on the right side of the Ostroga River, which was later called the Łódka and was opposite to the settlement of Lodz.
During the 16th century, around 700 people lived in Łódź. New houses were built around the Old Market Square. A street called Nad Rzeką was coming out of it. Then they began to be called Nadrzeczna, later Podrzeczna, and finally Drewnowska, apparently, the latter name was given to the influential Drewnowicz family from Łódź.
The 17th and 18th centuries were a turbulent period in the history of Poland, and also the time of the fall of Łódź. Wars, and especially the Swedish Deluge of 1655 destroyed the city very seriously. The Swedes burned 25 houses and murdered some of the townspeople. In 1661, a fire and plague passed through the city. At the end of the 17th century, the city rebuilt slightly and had 64 houses.
During the reign of King Stanisław Poniatowski, the bishop of Włocławek gave the inhabitants of Łódź the last privilege, i.e. he abolished his eternal duties and established rent in money as the only form of benefits for the owner. However, this reform did not manage to enter into force. Following the Second Partition of Poland, the town was annexed by Prussia in 1793. The Prussians took the goods from the bishops. end of the 18th century the town had only 190 inhabitants and only 44 houses, all buildings were wooden, no road was paved.
Modern period In the second decade of the 19th century, the area of its urban development, later the Old Town, was small and amounted to 20 ha. The urban layout has retained the typical features of the medieval layout until then. It was characterized by a network of narrow streets, leaving slightly obliquely from the Market Square and enclosing buildings in small, irregular blocks. The central part of the layout was marked by a market square, separated by an inter-market block from the square where the church stood. The whole town development was limited to housing these squares and the initial sections of eight streets, some of which crossed the road to nearby cities and took their names from them. Dense building development occurred only at the Market Square and along the market streets: Drewnowska, Podrzeczna, Nadstawna and Kościelna (known until the end of the first half of the 19th century as Piotrkowska).
Becoming an industrial city
In the 1815 treaty, it was planned to renew the dilapidated town and with the 1816 decree, issued by the Czar, a number of German immigrants received territory deeds for them to clear the land and to build factories and housing. Their incentives for settlement included "exemption from tax obligations for a period of six years, free materials to build houses, perpetual lease of land for construction, exemption from military service or duty-free transport of the immigrants' livestock." In 1820 Stanisław Staszic aided in changing the small town into a modern industrial centre.
In the vicinity of Łódź there was no possibility of developing mining and metallurgy, for that favorable geographical and political conditions of development were mentioned above industry, which is why the authorities decided to create a textile industry. At that time, abolition of the customs border between Congress Poland and the Russian Empire provided a very important economic and political stimulus for the development of the textile industry in Poland and the huge opportunities associated with it.dr hab. Marek Barwiński. Rozwój przestrzenny oraz przemiany funkcjonalne i społeczne Łodzi – uwarunkowania geograficzno-polityczne
It was decided that the "New Town", be located south of the existing "Old Town", at the opposite side of the Łódka river. The main reason was the land there belonged to the government. The new industrial Łódź created at that time was not a simple continuation of the feudal town. It was not created through an evolutionary process or by a gradual reconstruction of the medieval layout design for new industrial needs. On the contrary, it was a deliberate idea to create it outside this area, in the so-called "Raw root". Rajmund Rembieliński in 1820 personally designated a place on the market for the new settlement and defined the direction of future streets. He chose the top of the local hill through which he went along the Piotrków route along which several local roads converged. The new settlement had been assumed to be separate, though officially still a part of an existing city, therefore it was necessary to keep it as well integrated as possible, which was best done by the new Piotrków route, connecting the areas on both sides of the river by the shortest line.dr hab. Marek Barwiński. Rozwój przestrzenny oraz przemiany funkcjonalne i społeczne Łodzi – uwarunkowania geograficzno-polityczne
Polish insurgents operated in and around Łódź during the January Uprising of 1863–1864. At the beginning of the uprising, on January 31, 1863, a unit of 300 insurgents entered the city without a fight and seized weapons and funds for the uprising. In April 1863 the insurgents attacked a transport of prisoners of war captured by the Russians and liberated them. Further clashes between Polish insurgents and Russian troops took place in Łódź on June 18 and September 29, 1863.
In 1899, brothers Władysław and Antoni Krzemiński from the Polish noble family of Krzemiński of Prus III coat of arms founded the first stationary scinema in Poland (Gabinet Iluzji) at Piotrkowska Street. In 1899 Józef Piłsudski, the future Polish leader during World War I and the interwar period, and his wife Maria Piłsudska settled in Łódź. They edited and printed underground Polish press in the city, for which they were arrested by the Okhrana in 1900, and then imprisoned in the Warsaw Citadel.
The Łódź Insurrection occurred in 1905. Several years later, in 1913, labor strikes again occurred in Łódź. Hundreds of workers joined strikes at cotton mills in the city, resulting in mill closures.
Despite the impending crisis preceding World War I, Łódź grew exponentially and was one of the world's most densely populated industrial cities, with a population density of by 1914. In the aftermath of the Battle of Łódź (1914), the city came under Imperial German occupation on 6 December. With Polish independence restored in November 1918, the local population disarmed the German army. Subsequently, the textile industry of Łódź stalled and its population briefly decreased as ethnic Germans left the city.
Second Polish Republic In the interbellum Poland it was the capital of the Łódź Voivodeship. The city continued to develop. The sewage trewatment works station was built in 1928 at 1 Zamiejska street and began operate in December 1930 (it operated until 1996 and was demolished few years later).
Second World War
At the very beginning of the war, Łódź was a target of German aggression. The first German bombs fell in the area of Kaliska Railway Station and at Lublinek Airport outside the city. During the first week of occupation, economic life in Łódź came to a halt. German Luftwaffe raids completely disrupted the work of shops, offices, and various other institutions. Polish Air Force and anti-aircraft artillery, which were insufficient in quantity and strength, were not able to effectively counteract the brutal attacks of the enemy.Order of the Grodzki Starosta of Łódź of September 1, 1939, "Kurier Łódzki", September 2, 1939, No. 242, p. 2. Already on September 1, 1939, Mayor Jan Kwapiński addressed Łódź residents via radio, urging calm and resilience as war began. . He warned of possible shortages due to military demand and threatened severe penalties for merchants engaging in price gouging. The city had completed work on anti-aircraft trenches in parks and squares, but the mayor advised against digging them on private property.
By September 4, hundreds of reservists and volunteers crowded recruitment centers, demanding to join the army. Kwapiński asked military leaders to build defensive trenches and organize volunteer battalions, but the request was denied and Łódź was to remain undefended to minimize civilian casualties and urban destruction. The District Command issued a radio appeal for men under 50 to evacuate toward Warsaw or the Lublin Voivodeship, where new reserve units were forming.