Anna Fultnerová’s Tenement House

Between 1903 and 1905, Josef Gočár collaborated on several of his first projects in Hradec Králové, including the reconstruction and extension of houses, with František Jaroslav Černý. One of the projects was the tenement house No. 238. Art historian Karel Boromejský Mádl commented on these early designs by Josef Gočár in the following way: “...a nice harmony of forms, harmonic consistency with the front façade, a combination of real artistic authenticity and clear-minded young creation – the features so characteristic also for the above mentioned Kotěra’s pupils.” Zdeněk Wirth called this Gočár’s project “a juvenile debut” in the catalogue for Gočár’s posthumous exhibition in the Mánes Gallery. On the site of a former one-storey building, of which only the foundations remained, Gočár designed a two-storey house with two broken gables. He also designed a more plastic façade, unlike the one on house No. 349. The crown cornice was interrupted by two gables; below the cornice and in the façade central axis, there was an ornamental frieze. The fields between the windows on the first and second floor and the simple windows in the central axis were filled with plastic geometric patterns. Above the windows, there were ledges; in the simple window sills, there were brackets. On the ground floor, there were two narrow shops; the shop windows were made of wood. The ground floor was bordered with a bracket on both sides, ending in a stucco relief.

The construction of the house began in September 1903 and it was completed in July of the same year. The house was owned by Anna Fultnerová. The ground floor contained commercial premises; on each floor, there were two flats.

In 1934, the ground floor was reconstructed and the façade changed. At that time, the house was owned by Alois Vanický and his wife Matilda Vanická. The change of the façade included the blinding of Gočár’s decorative design, creating vertical interfenestral lesenes made of green reform scraped plaster and grey tiles. The window pillars were covered with brown tiles; the window frames were made of artificial stoneware in the colour of granite. The facing of the third-floor brickwork was made of brick-red tiles and jointed. The shop window was reconstructed as well. These changes were made by builder Stanislav Novotný and bricklayer František Forejtek. The 1934 façade is still preserved in its original form.

Kateřina Okounová, LZL