Izrael Poznański expanded an existing house at the corner of Ogrodowa and Zachodnia streets, working through three architects in succession, Hilary Majewski, Adolf Zeligson and Franciszek Chełmiński, who gave the complex its Neo-Renaissance and later Neo-Baroque form. Inside, a glass-ceilinged winter garden, a chamber of mirrors, and a ballroom and dining room painted by Samuel Hirszenberg trace the fortune his cotton mills next door made him. The palace and the factory, today the Manufaktura shopping and culture complex, were built as one address, so the museum now sits at the edge of the site that made Poznański rich. German occupiers used the building as a wartime headquarters, and after 1945 it served as a regional administrative office before opening in 1975 as the Museum of the City of Łódź.