Družstevní mlékárna

Between the wars, several cooperatives operated in Hradec Králové. In addition to the bakery cooperative, which included the cooperative mills, silos and bakeries of the cooperative sugar factory in Předměřice, and the Kávoprůmysl cooperative, which produced coffee substitute, there was also a dairy cooperative.
 

In the mid-twenties, when the land around today’s S. K. Neumanna Street was being developed with the prospect of a new railway station building, the construction of a new dairy factory and the administrative building of the dairy cooperative was initiated.
 

The task was undertaken by architect Václav Rejchl Jr., who also bought several plots of land and built tenement houses there. He designed a one-storey office with a flat roof and a basement. In the central part, there was an avant-corps with a portico, which carried a balcony accessible from the staircase hall. The façade had a wide strip separating the ground and first floors and a cordon cornice enclosing the façade, large, four-part windows, and a clear, symmetrical layout. The production wing with a gabled roof faced the courtyard. The main production hall was roofed with a glazed steel structure in the form of a gable roof. In the courtyard, there was a one-storey building with a loading ramp for receiving raw materials and a factory chimney with a water tank. The chimney was built by the Fischer brothers from Central Bohemia.
 

The building was one of the most modern dairies in Bohemia at that time. The operation was to be “provided with the most sanitary, efficient and up-to-date equipment, and to mediate direct contact between the farmers and consumers of the whole county by the supply of milk, butter, various cheeses and other dairy products.” The equipment was supplied by Novák & Jahn company. The dairy company products included pasteurized milk, cream, whipped cream, tea butter, yogurt, “all kinds of cheese, from the cheap folk kinds of cheese to the finest,” cottage cheese, buttermilk, and whey.
 

The building was expanded in the 1930s and the operation until the 1980s. The dairy ceased production in 1998, giving way to new residential development in 2005.
 

LZL