Four metal-organic coordination polymers [Co 2 (L) 3 (nipa) 2 ]· 6H 2 O (1), [Cd(L)(nipa)]·3H 2 O (2), [Co(L) (Hoxba) 2 ] (3) and [Ni 2 (L) 2 (oxba) 2 (H 2 O)]·1.5L·3H 2 O (4) were synthesized by reactions of the corresponding metal(II) salts with the rigid ligand 1,4-bis(1Himidazol-4-yl)benzene (L) and different derivatives of 5-nitroisophthalic acid (H 2 nipa) and 4,4Ј-oxybis(benzoic acid) (H 2 oxba), respectively. The structures of the complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Complexes 1 and 3 have the same one-dimensional (1D) chain while 2 is a 6-connected twofold interpenetrating three-dimensional (3D) 1808 network with α-Po 4 12 ·6 3 topology based on the binuclear Cd II subunits. Compound 4 features a puckered two-dimensional (2D) (4, 4) network, and the large voids of the packing 2D nets have accommodated the uncoordinated L guest molecules. An abundant of N-H···O, O-H···O and C-H···O hydrogen bonding interactions exist in complexes 1-4, which contributes to stabilize the crystal structure and extend the low-dimensional entities into high-dimensional frameworks. Lastly, the photoluminiscent properties of compounds 2 were also investigated.