Public Central Slaughterhouse of the Association of Butchers, Sausage Makers and the City of Hradec Králové

In 1899–1900, a municipal slaughterhouse was built on the banks of the Orlice River near the Moravian Bridge. However, in the 1920s, it ceased to be sufficient for the growing city of Hradec Králové and its surroundings, mainly due to the impossibility of introducing a railway siding. In 1929, it was decided to build a modern Central Public Slaughterhouse on the territory of the then still independent city of Prague Suburb, in the vicinity of the existing Prague-Suburban Slaughterhouse, the history of which dates back to 1832. These were buildings No. 244 and 505, the current appearance of which was designed in 1907. The project was developed by the city contractor Josef Vyleťal, the construction was then carried out by Contractor and the designer Josef Fňouk. The project of the new slaughterhouse consisted of three operational buildings and one administrative building with No. 816. 

The area of the slaughterhouse in Hradec Králové is also interesting from the historical point of view; slaughterhouses built on a greenfield site in the 1920s and 1930s were rather an exception in Czechoslovakia, as the vast majority of slaughterhouses were built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Simialr slaughterhouses are located in Tábor, Strakonice and Ústí nad Labem. According to Michaela Ryšková, an employee of the National Heritage Institute, it is a comprehensive set of operational buildings, which is ‘very interesting for its pure architectural design, which is linked to a logical and legible operational arrangement. The axial symmetry of the operating flows is transferred to the composition of the masses and the façade, where it is accentuated by the water tower.’
 

Villa No. 816 was conceived as a two-storey building with a partial basement with a hipped roof, from which a prismatic bay with a flat roof protruded in the middle. The bay hides the staircase and the main entrance to the villa. It is a brick building, the façade of which is very modestly decorated with cornices and semi-columns. The rooms were lit by a number of wooden four- and six-part windows and a number of smaller one- and two-part windows. An interesting element was the ground-floor administrative wing of the villa with office space and a laboratory, connected to the northwest side of the building. A distinctive element of the administrative wing was a columned porch with a separate entrance to the administrative building. This wing was expanded in 1943 by another laboratory room. The residential villa itself was divided into three residential units – for the machinist, the slaughterhouse and the veterinarian. The division of the cellar rooms corresponded to this division. On the ground floor there was a corridor and flats for the engineer and the slaughterhouse, each apartment had an entrance hall, bathroom, toilet, kitchen, pantry, and living room; the apartment of the slaughterhouse had one extra living room. A corridor connecting the main entrance with the garden ran through the ground floor. On the first floor, there was a veterinarian’s apartment with a veranda, enriched with a maid’s room and two more living rooms. On the second floor, there were attic spaces and a laundry room.
 

The building of the main slaughter hall, whose water tower dominates the area of the former slaughterhouse, is a two-storey partially basement reinforced concrete structure with brick fillings, which is covered by a flat roof with skylights. A distinctive building element is the roofed main entrance to the hall, which is supported by two reinforced concrete columns. This element is repeated on the south-eastern side of the building, namely by a weighing station. According to art historian Jakub Potůček , ‘the utilitarian purist aesthetics [of the main slaughter hall] is based on classical architecture. This is indicated both by the symmetry and overall proportions, as well as by the central entrance with the forward cover.’ The main slaughter hall is lit by a number of metal factory windows and skylights. There was a solar plant in the basement. On the ground floor of this central building of the complex, there were operating rooms, such as eight slaughtering stations, pre-cooling rooms, cold stores, a weighbridge room, but also operating rooms such as a boiler room, engine room, and employee areas. On the first floor, rooms were located for some other machinery of the slaughterhouse (e.g. air conditioning equipment).
 

The cowsheds differ significantly from the other buildings of the modern slaughterhouse complex by the saddle roof, which allowed straw to be stored for the litter. The plaster was simple with only small decorative elements in the form of cornices. The windows were metal, factory type. The cowsheds had two larger hall rooms and several smaller rooms. These included, for example, forced cutting and forfeit cowsheds with slaughter. A driving corridor for cattle ran through the building, which was to be connected to the railway siding, which led to the slaughterhouse area and ensured the transport of animals for processing. 

The smaller building of the stomach room corresponds in style to the main slaughter hall and the villa for employees. The plaster was conceived in the same way and the windows were factory in metal. In this building, a stomach room, a leather store, and an entrance and exit ramp were designed.
 

The slaughterhouse was built by the city of Hradec Králové and the Association of Butchers and Sausage Makers, with each of the investors having a half ownership share. In 1940, however, the slaughterhouse became the exclusive property of the city. It was in the 1940s that the area was affected by the first major interventions. In 1941 and 1942, a new assembly hall and office space were added to house No. 505, and houses No. 244 and 505 themselves were adapted. Significant construction modifications and extensions to the modern area took place after the WWII, when the slaughterhouse administration asked for the repair and replacement of some machines in the slaughterhouse. The courtyard was also paved, and the roofing on most of the buildings of the complex was replaced. In 1960, together with the completion of the meat processing plant in Březhrad, the operation of the Central Public Slaughterhouse in Kydlinovská Street was terminated and this area was only used for forced cutting and storage purposes. The forced cutting lasted here until 1993. The 1960s were the time when the layout of the main slaughter hall and the cowshed building were modified. In the 1990s, a building materials store moved into some of the buildings of the former slaughterhouse, which has been using them to this day. 
 

Since the 1960s, the area has been falling into disrepair, but many original elements have been preserved in the area, including massive metal entrance doors and windows with skylights, historical machines or the room of the horse pre-cooler, which is in its original condition, including technical equipment. Villa No. 816 underwent the most radical modifications. The original wooden windows were replaced with plastic ones and some window openings were walled up. The original open porch of the villa’s office wing was walled up, insulated and the new plaster differs in color not only from the villa itself, but also from most of the slaughterhouse buildings. Today, the office wing of the villa looks like a foreign body in relation to the villa. In 2022, a petition was published in which its authors and more than 200 petitioners opposed the possible demolition of the former slaughterhouse site. At the same time, the petition demanded that a new use be found for the slaughterhouse, for example, for culture. Following the petition, the City of Hradec Králové pledged to preserve the modernist slaughterhouse complex and the intention to reconvert the former slaughterhouse complex has also earned its place in the program statement of the Hradec Králové City Council. 

 

KK