Institute for the Improvement of Trades (Chamber of Commerce and Trades)

Since 1883, seven trade inspectorates operated in Bohemia (in Prague, Liberec, Plzeň, Cheb, České Budějovice, Hradec Králové and Ústí nad Labem), and three in Moravia and Silesia. Since 1910, there was a central office for the improvement of trades in Vienna, and in the same year, the Commercial, Trade and Industrial Headquarters of the Czech Interests of the Chamber District of Liberec in Hradec Králové was established. It was located in the rented house of Ladislav Tvrzký no. 410. On the basis of the Austro-Hungarian system, a system of trade support was established also after 1918, when the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Trades was to create a similar system of regional institutes. In addition to the Commercial Headquarters, the Institute for the Improvement of Trades was established in Hradec Králové in 1915 as a municipal organization connected to the city museum, which had the maintenance and development of industry and crafts on its agenda at that time (it was also briefly called the Museum of Arts and Crafts). After Czechoslovakia was established, this institution merged with the newly organized network of ministerial trade institutions.
 

Once the organization was established and commerce and industry in the city clearly developed, it was certain that the Institute would need a new building. In January 1926, Oldřich Liska designed a two-story building on the right bank of the Elbe River in the northern sector of the city. Oldřich Liska was apparently chosen on the basis of a competition, as a competing design by Josef Gočár has also survived. However, Gočár’s involvement is completely overlooked by Petr Grulich, a historian of trade and commerce in Hradec Králové. The construction based on Liska’s project took place from 20 May to 31 December of the same year. The original building designed by Liska included a caretaker’s flat, a laundry, a transformer room, a boiler room, and a classroom with an office facing the street, all in the raised basement. On the raised ground floor, there were seven offices (one with a file storage room), the director’s office with a waiting room, and a meeting room. Restrooms were oriented to the courtyard. On the first floor, there were seven offices, five facing the street and two facing the courtyard, and a large apartment with three rooms, a bedroom, a maid’s room, a bathroom, three closets, and a kitchen. The apartment also had a small terrace. Originally, the building had a pitched roof sloping down to the street, a staircase avant-corps; the design also included a standing figure sculpture on the west side of the street façade, on a plinth projecting above the terrace, probably an allegory of prosperity, crafts, or labor. 
 

In 1931, after the completion of the neighboring glass institute, Jan Rejchl designed an extension with a courtyard building. The ground floor building was to contain a multi-purpose hall, a glass furnace, laboratories lit by skylights, offices, and warehouses. The building was constructed in 1932 but it no longer exists.
 

Another extension to the institution, renamed the Chamber of Commerce and Trades in 1938, dates back to February 1939. The extension included one row of offices in the north part of the building facing the courtyard – three on the raised ground floor and three on the first floor. The project was designed by Oldřich Liska. According to Petr Grulich, the contractor was Jaroslav Hájek, but this information could not be verified in the sources.
 

In 1941, plans were drawn up for the extension of the second floor and the modification of the façade according to Jan Rejchl’s design. The project of March 1941 included the bricking up of the terrace on the existing first floor, which belonged to the apartment already used as offices at that time, and the addition of a new floor, which was to contain thirteen offices and one waiting room. The partitions of the offices facing the street contained built-in filing cabinets. The building had a new street façade – the plain, unarticulated exterior enclosed by a crown attic cornice and punctuated on the north side by a plinth for an intended, but probably never installed statue which was replaced by a much more grand and intricate articulation in lesene frames formed by granite cladding. The staircase window above the main entrance, now extending over three floors, received rich stained-glass panels that were lost in the post-1948 reconstruction. The permit was issued in the middle of the same year and the estimated construction period was six months: “Building prohibition – permission for an exception: In response to the request of 23 May 1941, the Ministry of Social and Health Administration, in accordance with Government Decree No. 166/41 Coll. and with the consent of the Reich Protector gives the contractor permission to carry out an extension of the second floor of the frontage of the building in Hradec Králové, 695 Škroupova Street.” In 1942, Jan Rejchl modified the articulation and tiling of the entrance and made minor modifications in the staircase shaft. The building plans the modification was based on differ in detail, e.g. the staircase was moved to the attic. The building plans were signed by the contractor who carried out the construction, Jaroslav Hájek. 
 

After 1948 and the abolition of the system of chambers of commerce and trade, the building became the seat of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The plan for the addition of a new wing in the north-western part of the plot, parallel to the Elbe embankment, dates back to 1958. The project was designed by Jan Rejchl, who worked in Stavoprojekt, a state planning institute at that time. The lowered basement was to include covered garages, the raised ground floor two offices, warehouses, and an archive, the first floor two guest rooms, an office, a small and a large meeting room and a refreshment area with a kitchenette. On the second floor, Rejchl planned an office, toilets and a large meeting room. The extension, however, was cancelled. The building was to be in the spirit of late modernism, with only the part facing the waterfront to be framed by a lesene of granite slabs. Architect Rejchl wrote about the architectural design: “The building and the existing object form a single structural and architectural unit with a distinctive motif of a large meeting hall on the second floor. The appropriate use of stone slab cladding on the waterfront façade will contribute to the visual expression of the building.” By 1968, the building already housed the editorial office of the local communist newspaper Pochodeň, which came under the Prague headquarters of the Rudé právo. For this purpose, a local company, ERAM – kovo – elektroprůmysl Hradec Králové, supplied new installation of electrical wiring in 1968; in 1977, the local office of Stavoprojekt supplied new heating wiring and connected the building to district heating. After 1990, the State District Archives moved into the building.
 

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