page_title: Piotrkowska Street
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Piotrkowska Street / History
context_page_description: Piotrkowska Street, the main artery of Łódź, Poland, is one of the longest commercial thoroughfares in Europe, with a length of around 4.2 km. It is one of the major tourist attractions of the city. It runs longitudinally in the straight line between the Liberty Square and the Independence Square.
  From the very beginning this street was the central axis, around which the city grew bigger, and its development spontaneously gave the present shape to its centre. At first the city was mainly the highway, but later it changed into the city's showcase, the leisure and shopping centre, where the life of growing industrial agglomeration could be observed. The street deteriorated remarkably after World War II. Only after 1990 was it revitalized step by step and changed into a kind of pedestrian precinct. It has a function similar to a market square of old towns in other cities. Nowadays the buildings, town-planning, institutions, restaurants, clubs and pubs situated next to this street, create its specific atmosphere, which is said to have a "cult" character reaching even outside of Łódź.
context_section_description: In the beginning, the present Piotrkowska Street functioned as a route joining Piotrków Trybunalski and Zgierz. On this path a small, roadside urban settlement called Łódź was located. In 1821 Rajmund Rembieliński - the president of the Commission of the Province of Mazovia - took some action in order to regulate the building development in the industrial settlement. This settlement was called The New Town and it was situated in the south from the "old" Łódź. On the street plan of the settlement, the route line was outlined, and along it the cross streets and standard 17,5–21 meters wide plots with a surface area of one morgen, allotted to weaving craftsmen. Standard houses were built on those plots – a workshop, which stood facing the route, whereas the rest of the plot was a "garden" for the owner's family. At the northern end of the route, the New Town Market was outlined (now the Liberty Square), which had stood in the south from the Old Town Market. At first (around 1815) the name Piotrkowska Street was used to describe the northern part of the route joining both markets, whereas the southern part (the present Piotrkowska Street) didn't have any name. This means that Piotrkowska Street was a kind of courtyard and market for the huge "manufacture of Łódź", so for the whole New Town. The fact that Łódź had this function, is the reason why in this city never developed anything like a classical city centre with a centrally situated market and co-centrally expanding commercial institutions and public organizations, and Piotrkowska Street took on this role.
caption: The Grand Hotel, Piotrkowska Street 72
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