Primary and Secondary School

The school, which was built in 1898 by the Prague Suburbs Municipality in today’s Habrmanova Street after the district became independent, soon ceased to be sufficient. The rapidly increasing number of children made the municipality add another floor to the new building just eight years later. However, this did not solve the problem, as the Prague Suburbs experienced enormous development after the war. In the 1920s, it already had over 5,000 inhabitants and was promoted to the status of a town (1924). An important task for the town hall was to build a new school, for which a plot of land near the then Rašínovo náměstí Square was chosen. The building was originally designed by Jan Rejchl, who defeated Oldřich Liska in a narrow competition. After long peripetia, the project was entrusted to another architect from Hradec Králové, Gustav Louženský, who was in his late 20s. 

 

Construction based on design began in October 1939 and was completed in September 1941. Paradoxically, it was one of the last projects in the short history of the independent Prague Suburbs, which was incorporated into the city of Hradec Králové by the decision of the German Protectorate administration the following year. Gustav Louženský, whose life and work is still quite unknown, studied architecture and civil engineering at the Prague Technical University in 1929–1935. The contract from Mayor František Valenta was probably the first major one for him. In the design and in the subsequent design of Sternwald’s Villa in Baarova Street, he brilliantly demonstrated his affection for the emotional direction of Czech functionalism. 

 

Louženský designed a simple building in the shape of a shallow U, which stepped away from the main road, thus preserving the green belt. The main façade of the three-storey building has 22 vertical window axes. It is crowned by a subtle cantilevered cornice, divided into two parts, and a low attic with a slightly elevated center and seven decorative circular openings. The parterre is symmetrically highlighted by two entrances aligned with the attic and united by an interjacent arcade on three columns and a parapet made of hollow bricks. In the rear part, short wings are attached to the building on both sides, which protrude into the side streets as a shallow avant-sorps with four window axes. The left wing facing Vydrova Street ends with a one-storey director’s villa. Its organic features, such as the round window on the villa extension or the rounded end of the attic on both wings, softened the functionalist rigor. The school interior included a total of 19 classrooms, with boys on each floor on the left, girls on the right. On the ground floor, in addition to the vestibule, there were also central dressing rooms for boys and girls, the headmaster’s office, the staff room, and the call-office. In the middle of the main façade was the janitor’s apartment, consisting of a room, kitchen, and bathroom. At the back, there was a gym with changing rooms and showers, and a laundry room. 

 

The area in front of the school was decorated with a bust of Alois Jirásek by sculptor Josef Václav Škoda, which was not put in its place until June 1949. 

 

In 2001–2003, the school complex was expanded with modern one-storey and two-storey extensions of the gym, offices and canteen, which are connected to the main building to create a unit.

 

MP