Josef Mudra

Josef Mudra was born as the youngest of seven children into a peasant family in the village of Mostiště. His parents were Josef Mudra (1853–1917) and Josefa Mudrová (1856–1946), née Vyčichlová. After graduating from school in the town of Radnice, he went to Prague, where he studied at the Czech Technical University, specializing in surveying. Because of his artistic talent and entrepreneurial spirit, however, he worked as a builder and architect. He began to work as a builder in 1922, shortly after which he moved to Hradec Králové. On 5 July 1924, he married Kamila Mudrová, née Kubecová.

Between 1923 and 1926 Josef Mudra built an admirable number of buildings in Hradec Králové, most of them in the Prague Suburbs. Apparently, he was in good terms with the mayor of the city, Jan Kotek, as evidenced by several municipal projects. The first project was the municipal house with the municipal office, library and police station in the Prague Suburbs. It is not certain where exactly it was built – it could be an adapted building in today’s Habrmanova Street, mentioned in the city chronicle reports in 1924: “In the same street there is also the municipal office and the police station, which does not yet have its own building. Previously (until 1919) it used to be located in the Municipal House in Chelčického Street, but when its agenda grew very large and the small (single) room was not enough, two rooms were rented in Školská Street for the municipal office and one for the police station.” [1] Alternatively, it could be the adaptation of the Sokol gymnasium in Chelčického Street, which was extended in 1924 (and rebuilt in 1939). The Sokol chronicle reports it as follows: “In 1924, an adaptation of the Sokol gymnasium was carried out at a cost of CZK 20,000 to provide dressing rooms, a small hall, and a puppet theatre.” [2] The Sokol gymnasium (also known as the Municipal House) housed the library until 1925, when the library moved to the building of the simultaneously adapted and expanded Municipal Office in Habrmanova Street. However, this situation was short-lived, as all municipal functions were soon concentrated in the new town hall and municipal house at Sukovy sady, built in 1926–1927 by architect Jaroslav Stejskal. The second municipal house is a residential, one-storey house at 35 Nerudova Street. It expresses Mudra’s sensitivity to the architecture of modern decorativism – the façade is articulated by horizontal facades, stepped window jambs, and rectangular sgraffito panels with motifs of cornucopias between the windows on the first floor. Three arched oriels project from the roof.

The mid-twenties were marked by the construction of Mudra’s own project in Vrchlického Street, where he and his family lived in the largest building. This construction was followed by the construction in the so-called Srdínko’s Garden, founded by Jan Hostivít Pospíšil, which was later given as a dowry to his daughter Antonia, who became famous as the editor of Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová’s cookbooks. [3] Srdínko’s Garden was later owned by František Srdínko, Mayor Ulrich’s father-in-law. In 1924, the garden apparently disappeared and Josef Mudra was asked to design a plan for the subdivision and regulation of the future development. This development was concentrated in a newly established street (today’s Bohuslav Martinů Street), which used to be the main cross-corridor in Srdínko’s Garden. Mudra also designed a semi-detached house, probably at 654 and 655 Bozděchova Street and used his patent Isostone blocks and a remarkable keel roof supported by a wooden slatted net for the construction. In Hradec Králové, we can also find another Mudra’s project: the transformation station in New Hradec Králové, which used to stand at the intersection of today’s Hlavní and Husova Streets. It was an atypical building because transformer stations were already designed as standard, unified projects at that time. In the nearby village of Stěžery, Mudra designed an extension and addition to the house of the factory owner Emil Šulc (no. 130). He added a storey to the originally Neo-Renaissance ground-floor house and modified the façade in the Art Deco style, which features high fluting, decorative reliefs with putti in the spandrels, a blind balustrade between the ground and first floors, and volute gables on both corners. Outside Hradec Králové, according to the author’s list of works, Mudra also built houses for the building cooperative in Velké Poříčí nad Metují in 1922–1923, probably the two tenement houses at numbers 45 and 46 in the town square.

From the mid-1920s, Mudra invented and improved his Isolar insulating blocks, which he used in the construction of several family and terraced houses in Hradec Králové. From the 1930s onwards, he obtained a number of patents: Isolar I hollow blocks (1931), Isolar II insulating system (1932), Isolar III five-inch partitions (about 1932), Islar IV ceiling blocks (1933), Ideal tiles (1934), ceiling bearing blocks (1936), and brick roofing (1938). [4] These systems were used in dozens of building projects all over Czechoslovakia by the most prominent architects and builders. They were used, for example, in the construction of a spa hotel in Trenčianske Teplice by Jaromír Krejcar, in the savings bank in Havlíčkův Brod by František Albert Libra, in the women’s home in Smíchov by Josef Hlaváček, in the realschule in Prague–Dejvice by Evžen Linhart, in the houses of the General Pension Institute employees’ cooperative by Josef Havlíček and Karel Honzík, and in two projects by Jindřich Freiwald and Jaroslav Böhm’s office: the staff building in a sanatorium in Prague–Podolí and a building in the Avia factory in Prague–Vysočany. [5]

The fact that Josef Mudra learned from the progressive tendencies in architecture at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s is evidenced by his own Prague villa at 1695 Nad Šárkou Street from 1936. The smooth façade is punctuated by large windows, balconies with tubular railings, reminiscent of the balconies in the “dormitory” of the Bauhaus school in Dessau, and a horizontal glazed area illuminating the three-storey stair hall. However, the villa is not an avant-garde showpiece; it also has traditional elements – a hipped roof and an avant-corps to the garden made of unplastered bricks. 

LZL

(based on biography by Kamila Matoušková)

Notes

[1] State Regional Archives in Hradec Králové, Prague Suburbs, town chronicle. Thanks to Jan Košek for the research and mediation.

[2] Coll., Pamětní list vydaný na oslavu čtyřicetiletého trvání tělocvičebné jednoty Sokol na Pražském Předměstí, 1895–1935, Hradec Králové 1935, pp. 19–20. Jan Košek.

[3] Comp. Osvěta lidu, 1924, p. 77, 29 November 1924, p. 3, I thank Jaroslava Pospíšilová for her research and mediation.

[4] According to the biography compiled on the basis of the author’s list of works by Kamila Matoušková.

[5] Ibid.