The Avion Hotel

The constructivist construction of the Avion Hotel was initiated by the Matějka family.

A detached hotel building was erected on an elongated plot of the then Jugmannova Street, which was to be a big city boulevard connecting the developing Prague Suburbs with

the newly built train station and the city center. The Avion Hotel was considered one of the most luxurious hotels in Hradec Králové next to the Urban Grand Hotel.

 

The building plans signed by the builder Antonín Slejška are dated May 1929.

 

The building permit was applied for by the Prague Suburbs Municipal Authority on 19 February 1929 and issued on 7 March of the same year. Construction took place from 1 August 1929 to 22 July 1930. The building was handed over for use on 7 August 1930.

 

The basement was divided into two functional parts. There was a multi-purpose oblong hall with facilities, lit by daylight from seven glass block skylights from the street. It was accessed by stairs from the main entrance and then by an operating staircase to the preparation and cold storage rooms. The entrance included a lobby, restrooms, a passenger elevator and

a beverage elevator. In the service area towards the yard, there was the boiler room, a fuel store, potato store with a separate lift to the ground floor, a well with a pump, a vegetable and egg store and another fuel store. The building was entered through a door on the right hand side of the front; the door was a revolving door leading to a large lobby with a booth for

the porter. The lobby was followed by toilets and a staircase for guests leading to

the basement hall and the upper floors. The restaurant hall ran through the center of the ground floor’s T-shaped floor plan. It occupied almost the entire street frontage and extended into the courtyard. Connected to the restaurant hall was a tap room, a preparation room,

a modern kitchen with stoves, food elevators to the basement and a staircase to the basement. The kitchen included a storeroom and it had a separate entrance to the garden. To the left of the frontage, there was a passage to the yard and garden. The rear of the restaurant hall facing the courtyard was lit by skylights. The upper floors therefore had a U-shaped plan. On the first floor, there was a generous apartment on the left, probably for

the owners’ family. It extended across the entire depth of the floor plan. Two large rooms faced the street, and the living room, bedroom and children’s room with bathroom faced

the courtyard. There were also four double hotel rooms, and to the right, there was a large community room that housed various community organizations such as the Sokol, the union for the development of the city, the local cremation society, the retired teachers’ association, the booksellers’ guild, the carrier pigeon fanciers’ association, etc. There was a U-shaped conference table arrangement with twenty-six seats. The courtyard faced the room facilities:

a shared bathroom, two toilets, and a laundry room. Both tracts facing the courtyard had longitudinal balconies. The second and third floors had identical floor plans. There were eight identical single rooms facing the street, and in the left wing facing the courtyard there was

a smaller, atypical double room, one two-room suite, one small single room, toilet, and a small staff room. In the right-hand wing facing the courtyard, there were more facilities: a laundry room, two toilets, and a bathroom with a bath. The layout of the fourth floor was different.

A large residence terrace of 65m2 faced the street in the middle. There were two single rooms on each side. In the left wing facing the courtyard, there were two smaller single staff room and one double room. At the back, there was a central laundry room and two drying rooms.

In the middle wing towards the courtyard, there were two more smaller guest rooms and

a laundry store. In the right wing facing the courtyard, there were

the guest facilities as on the lower floors. The house had a flat roof and nine chimneys.

 

The exterior of the house was very modern. The restaurant floor was glazed and the upper floors were divided only by distinctive lesenes between the windows, originally bordered by

a single row of exposed masonry, and the façade was topped by a receding terrace on

the fourth floor, the front wall of which was also of exposed masonry. From the beginning,

the façade had distinctive neon signs: “HOTEL AVION” under the terrace sill, “GARAGE” above the ground floor passage, and “HOTEL” above the ground floor entrance.

The combination of smooth, white plaster and exposed masonry was also used on

the courtyard façade. The exposed masonry also formed the three windows in each wing and the entire fourth floor. The original design also included a courtyard design with a garden restaurant and a circular wooden pavilion, with thirteen deciduous trees towering over ten rows of long and short garden tables, and a lawn parterre with three additional trees in

he center. The garden restaurant was separated from the vehicular driveway, leading from

the driveway to the garages at the rear of the site, by a hedge. Behind the garages with seven covered parking spaces and a bowling alley in the eastern part, there was an orchard with sixteen fruit trees planted in a regular 4 × 4 grid. 

 

In the late 1960s, the interior of the hotel was renovated and the hotel was re-opened on 1 December 1969. A day wine bar was operated in the basement hall. The Avion Hotel was one of the most luxurious hotels in Hradec Králové and is an extraordinary example of modern hotel architecture and modernization of hotel services at the turn of the 20th and 30th century.

 

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