The so-called “Finnish Houses” for the employees of VEZ

In 1950, eleven wooden houses for the employees of the VEZ (Development Electroceramic Plant) were built in the northeastern part of the Silesian Suburb towards the railway station. The wooden houses were built after WWII from Swedish wood (yet they were called “Finnish Houses”), which was imported under the UNRRA program. Although some of the houses were built according to the Nordic (Danish, Swedish) projects of prefabricated houses, most of them were built according to the Austrian Hartl Haus system. Wenzel Hartl’s company exploited Hungarian Jews at the end of WWII and had to provide its know-how to the victorious states as war reparations.
 

According to a certificate issued by the National Committee in Hradec Králové on 5 September 1950, the prefabricated houses were built between June and 23 August 1950, when they were approved for occupation.
 

The houses had a covered entrance porch with a glass wall (apparently all the porches were fully glazed during the construction, thus creating a covered vestibule), behind which there was a hall with a staircase, a pantry, a toilet, and a bathroom. The kitchen faced the garden and the living room was oriented to the gable front. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, a larger and a smaller one, both facing the same gable.
 

The prefabricated houses in the Silesian Suburbs represent the last major development of detached houses in the first half of the 20th century, which was partly inspired by pre-war employee villa colonies and provided a good standard of family housing for employees. From the 1950s onwards, the construction of employee housing, family and terraced houses was carried out in a different way, mostly through self-help construction according to standard projects offered by state institutes or cooperatives.
   

LZL