19th-Century Wooden Houses of Craftsmen from Zgierz – Precious Heritage or Troublesome Inheritance?

Abstract

Zgierz, a town located in the central part of the Łódź Province, has a unique urban complex in the form of a craftsmen’s town built from scratch in the first half of the 19th century. This was a result of a settlement operation carried out in Congress Poland to boost the economy of the newly created state. The settlers were mostly cloth makers of Polish and German descent, primarily from the territory of the Prussian Partition. Regular arrangement, with symmetrical streets and a market square in the middle, on a high river bank, went hand in hand with aesthetic and functional late classical architecture, which is why this centre can be called a Biedermeier town. Even though durable materials were preferred, most houses that have survived are made of wood, and yet decorative elements can still be seen on many of them. Today, the houses, divided into numerous flats and inhabited by qualifying occupiers, are used contrary to their original purpose and inappropriately for their status. So far, two attempts to revitalise the area in question have been made. In consequence, the Town of Weavers Culture Park was established, seven of the houses were renovated, and fragments of two streets were restored to their former appearance. The paper presents the past and present situation of the historic development of the New Town considering its social context, and attempts to summarise the revitalisation activities performed to date.