Old Sokol Gym

The Hradec Králové Sokol gym, built in 1883, is one of the first buildings of its kind designed specifically for the needs of the Sokol movement. In the first decades of its activity, the organization often used the halls and equipment for other purposes or rented multi-purpose spaces. The first Sokol gym in what is now the Czech Republic was built in Prague’s New Town, designed by architect Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann in 1863. It was supposed to represent the ideal promoted by the aesthetician and founder of the movement, Miroslav Tyrš. Its Neo-Renaissance style was supposed to refer to the ancient idea of kalokagathos, the unity of soul and body. However, Miroslav Tyrš, in the spirit of his generational peers, also saw the Renaissance as a manifesto of Czech emancipation; just a year before the establishment of the Sokol gymnasium in Hradec Králové, he wrote: “If the French and the Germans are cultivating their Renaissance [movement], let us not forget the Czech Renaissance.” This corresponded to the first Sokol gyms on Czech territory in Kutná Hora (1885), Prague-Karlín (1886), and Chrudim and Dvůr Králové (1898).
 

It is therefore surprising that the Sokol gym in Hradec Králové, built on the northeast corner of the hill of the old town, was not a traditional Neo-Renaissance building, as the movement canon commanded. As we can sees from its preserved torso and the period plans, the Hradec Králové Sokol gym combined Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Baroque elements, were typical for Christian architecture. Christian values and “Christian chivalry” were part of the value system of the Sokol movement, emphasized, for example, by František Ladislav Rieger. 
 

The Hradec Králové Sokol gym was a one-storey building with a low saddle roof. It building stood on a multi-level terrain, and from the western façade to the ground floor, there was a gate leading to a shed and fire engine garage, which was connected to the exercise hall. In the eastern part of the building, there was a fire tower. The entrance was on the first floor, in the northern part of the building which was without windows. Behind the entrance, there were staircases to the ground floor and to the elevated area with facilities: a one-room apartment with a kitchen and a dry toilet, a dressing room, a men’s toilet with a urinal and a dry toilet, and a women’s toilet with water piping. There was also a gallery around the hall with the fencing room located in the central space. The end of the hall consisted of a fire tower base and two staircase shafts, one with a semicircular ground plan and one with a rectangular ground plan.
 

In 1930, the main Sokol activities moved to the new Sokol gym built by architect Milan Babuška. The Sokol hall in the old town was used only occasionally and as a multi-purpose hall, gradually falling into disrepair. The orthomap from 1997 still shows its roof, while the orthomap from 2005 shows only the perimeter walls, gradually succumbing to devastation. Only the portal with a volute gable and a window, the so-called bull’s eye, typical of late Baroque architecture, has been preserved from the original façade. 
 

The old Sokol gym in Hradec Králové was a unique building, one of the first Sokol gymnasiums in the Czech lands and the first Sokol gym to deviate from the Neo-Renaissance canon, and it was an example of a synthesis of several architectural languages.

 

LZL