Trade Tenement House

The establishment of Czechoslovakia influenced the building industry which had to address the housing shortage. At that time, architect Oldřich Liska collaborated with the Association of Builders in Hradec Králové on fair distribution of state and municipal contracts. Most projects designed by Liska included urban tenement houses or condominiums. 

The Trade House No. 581 was a collaborative project of Oldřich Liska and builders Josef Fňouk and Josef Jihlavec. It was built between 1920 and 1921. The large tenement house complemented the pre-war blocks of flats in the southwestern part of Masarykovo Square, designed by Oldřich Liska. Its decorations were inspired by late Art Nouveau and classical and cubist forms. The building was one of the last joint projects of architect Liska and the Association of Builders. It is a complex of three houses separated from each other for sanitary reasons and fire safety with a solid wall with no openings from the foundations to the roof. The façade of the three building parts was designed as a whole; the front façade facing Šafaříkova Street includes multi-storey oriels on a polygonal plan. The entire façade is terminated with a distinct classical cornice. On the first and second floors, the façade is divided by round lesenes separating the window axes. The arched openings of the ground-floor shop windows and the passage match the morphology of the semi-circular dormer windows in the mansard roof and the window arches on the third floor. 

The large tenement building includes a two-storey building with a basement and a mansard facing Šafaříkova Street and a three-storey building facing Masarykovo Square. Each of the three building parts had its own entrance and staircase, but they had a common courtyard where workshops, hencoops, and other facilities were situated. The courtyard could be accessed only from Šafaříkova Street. 

In 1938, the complex was divided into three separate houses: now, the corner part of the building is No. 1243/2; the other part from the square to Šafaříkova Street is no. 581/4; the third part is No. 581/6. At present, this separation is reflected not only in the cadastre, but also in the exterior of the houses. The corner part has recently undergone reconstruction and it has a grey and beige ground-floor façade, dividing lesenes and spandrels, and creamy ochre window parts; the colours of the other two façades in Šafaříkova Street have various shades, from beige to brick-red. 

Olena Ovelian