Centralne Muzeum Włókiennictwa

The museum fills Ludwik Geyer's White Factory, the mechanized cotton mill that brought the first steam engine to the Kingdom of Poland when it opened in 1839. Geyer imported the engine from the Cockerill works in Seraing, Belgium, and the factory's own chimney became the first to rise over Łódź, part of what turned the city into what contemporaries called the Polish Manchester. A fire, bad investments and mounting competition forced the factory to close in 1862, and the building stood largely idle until the city chose it as the site for a new textile museum in 1955. The museum opened in 1960, and over the following decades it took over the whole four-wing factory complex, adding the eastern wing as recently as 2002.