On the eve of World War I, local businessman Josef Novotný decided to build an object with “a restaurant or rather a residential” function on a plot of land on today’s Baťkovo náměstí Square. The project was carried out by local architect František Koleman and the façade designed by architect Jindřich Freiwald, recommended to Mayor František Ulrich by Jan Kotěra who was Freiwald’s teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts.
The building exterior features vertical lesenes, stucco ornaments, and a ceramic mosaic in a semi-circular field in a distinct triangular gable. The façade is divided by two oriels on decorative consoles. The entrance to the restaurant is roofed by a decorative metal canopy with glass panels. Below the crown cornice, there was an inscription written in Cubist block letters: “HOTEL – START – HOTEL”. The layout of the building corresponded to its function as a hotel for demanding customers: the ground floor was occupied by a luxury restaurant, which retained its reputation even after World War II, and there were large hotel rooms upstairs. The permission to build the hotel was issued on 29 August 1913; the final inspection of the building took place on 24 July 1914.
After World War I, around 1922, Josef Novotný had an extension to the building (no. 625) designed and built by developer Josef Jihlavec; its façade was similar to the one designed by Freiwald.
In 2016–2017, the exterior of the object underwent a total reconstruction, and the original decorative elements and door and window panels were restored.
LZL
The Paříž Hotel is part of the protected site of the city conservation area in Hradec Králové.
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Jindřich Freiwald; Jaroslav Böhm, Naše stavby, Praha 1924, s. 128
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Jakub Potůček, Hradec Králové: Architektura a urbanismus 1895–2009, Hradec Králové 2009, s. 141
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Jakub Potůček; Vendula Potůčková, Slavné stavby Jindřicha Freiwalda, Praha 2015, s. 52–55
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Ladislav Zikmund-Lender, Struktura města v zeleni: Moderní architektura v Hradci Králové, Hradec Králové 2017, s. 111–128
