Prior

The redevelopment of Prague Suburbs between Resslova and Sokolská Streets (the ring road) towards the railway station along today’s Dukelská and Hořická Streets was the subject of a master plan designed by František Bartoš and Josef Havlíček as early as 1946–1947. It was also included in Břetislav Petránek’s 1961 master plan and various plans which included the demolition of Robert Schmidt’s villa or the construction of several high-rises in Hořická Street in the following two decades. It was not until the mid-1970s that a partial redevelopment was decided upon to make way for a new department store; the space in front of the department store was to be for a new theatre. The redevelopment gave way to the demolition of 45 buildings, mainly two-storey and single-storey tenement houses and family houses, which were demolished between 1975 and 1976.
 

The department store with 7200 m² of sales area, whose investor and operator was the state enterprise Prior, became the fourth largest department store in Czechoslovakia. It was designed by the Brno architect Jiří Kučera, who worked at the State Project Institute in Brno. The original project envisaged a smooth façade and wide, strip windows on the first and second floors in both entrance façades (in the east and in the west). On the western façade, the strip windows were to flow freely into the service house connected to the Prior department store towards today’s náměstí 28. října Square. The project was later changed and the façade was covered with ceramic cladding, was commissioned from the Hradec Králové artist Bedřich Šimon by MUS.  The complex of the department store and service house had a third section as well – a parking house in the southern part of the site. The new building was experimental also in technical terms, combining a reinforced concrete structure with a span of 9 × 9m with a then unique air-conditioning system.  The exposed corner of Dukelská Street and náměstí 28. října Square was, according to the author, “plastically emphasized by the vertical motif of the staircase and the restaurant loggia.”
  

The whole department store was passable in the east-west axis. On the ground floor, there was a grocery store and services; on the first floor, there was a clothing store, housewares and a toy shop; on the top floor, there was a public cafeteria and a factory canteen, which were separate but served by one kitchen. In the dining room on the third floor, there is one of the largest mosaics in Hradec Králové, depicting the city skyline and its important monuments and landmarks. The entire complex had 500 employees and a capacity of 150 apprentices.
 

The department store was opened on 29 April 1981, waiting for the delivery of escalators from the Soviet Union, which were the first escalators installed in the city. In the 1980s, the Prior department store was part of the East Bohemian Department Stores Pardubice; in 1988 it became an independent state enterprise. In 1992, it was purchased by the American company K-mart, which initiated the first large-scale reconstruction. The new store operated on the ground and first floors until 2019, when a two-year renovation began, resulting in the division of the two floors into a number of smaller stores.
 

The building had sophisticated minimalist details, an impressive exterior design complemented by a mosaic with Hradec Králové motifs in the interior on the third floor, and also a number of technical and typological innovations.
 

LZL