The Post and Telegraph Office 2

With regard to the fastest growing periphery of Hradec Králové – Pražské Předměstí (Prague Suburbs) and the construction of the monumental train station building with a tower and its foreground creating a metropolitan square, the post office decided to build a new building with appropriate solemnity. The importance of the local post office corresponded to the fact that the seat of the national Post and Telegraph Office was in the nearby town of Pardubice.

The project was designed by developer and designer František Komárek, who previously designed buildings such as the Central house with arcades and a cinema or the Avion Hotel. The building exteriors were symmetrically designed and structured in the spirit of modern classicism. The main façade with the entrance to the postal hall is divided by eight wide lesenes defining the space for seven window axes on the ground floor and first floor. Above the entrance, there is a small relief of the state emblem, and there were two poles for hanging state flags on the sides. The exterior facing today’s Zamenhofova Street features two side service entrances. They lead to the vertical two-storey staircase windows that define the side façade. There are seven window axes among the staircase avant-corps. On the side façade facing Zamenhofova Street, there was an inscription in capital letters (Poštovní a telegrafní úřad 2/Post and Telegraph Office 2) at the first floor level.

The middle of the building included a service hall lit by a roof segmental vault featuring glass-concrete panels. At the rear of the building, there were utility premises for sorting letters and parcels and ramps for trucks to receive and dispatch correspondence and mail. A tunnel connected the new post office with the railway yard.

The post office is a good example of regional architecture built for state institutions, which usually absorbed new impulses to create utility premises and offices that resembled functioning machines, but used traditionally monumental forms inspired by the tradition of the past.  

LZL