Čeněk Vorlíček’s Villa

The construction of the house for Čeněk Vorlíček, an industrialist in Prague–Vinohrady, began in December 1920. The new building was completed in November 1921. The one-storey villa was built by Josef Povýšil in Na Příkopech (now Hradební) Street. The main façade with a decorative gable is oriented to Hradební Street; the side façade faces Plácelova Street. The latter is decorated with corner polygonal avant-corps closed with a bell roof and an avant-corps with a wooden structure including an indoor garden on each floor. The house base consists of Cyclopean foundation walls. The façade is geometrically divided by lesenes; the villa has a pronounced crown cornice. In the spandrels between the ground floor and the first floor, there are geometric ornamental friezes. The cornice segments in the gable and the decoratively structured chimney built of unplastered bricks may remind us of Jaroslav Vondrák’s villa in Prague–Střešovice; the polygonal corner avant-corps and the small façade ornament suggest the popularity of traditional patterns.

The internal layout is typical for the villas of the time. The basement housed facilities such as cellars and a laundry room. In 1923, one of the cellars was converted into the caretaker’s flat. There are two flats in the villa, one on the ground floor, one upstairs. The common rooms such as the dining room and the living room are oriented to the street; the bedrooms were designed to face the house garden. No major reconstruction work has been done and there have been only minor changes to the layouts. 

Anastasiia Belousova and LZL