Thanks to its elegant form, exclusive materials, and innovative interior layout, the apartment house of the owner of a leather goods factory is one of the best buildings of its type, and not only on our territory. It also stands out in the context of other works by the Oehlers, who greatly appreciated the cooperation with Karel Zejda, an enlightened builder, in previous joint projects.
The “deep human relationship between the builder and the creator of his building”, so essential to the Oehlersʼ work, promised a splendid result. The authorial duo proved successful for Zejda thanks to their sophisticated projects for the extension of the main factory building and the new administrative pavilion of his company KAZETO in the intentions of emotional “white” functionalism. The design of a tenement house with its own apartment, intended for a plot of land in the “modernised” Bartošova Street near the centre, aspiring – according to the contemporary press – to be a street of great urban character, was a task he therefore naturally entrusted to them. At first glance, the surprising intention of an extremely prosperous entrepreneur to settle not in his own villa, but in a terraced apartment house, surrounded by neighbours, but situated in the centre of the town, was not unique in its time, as evidenced, for example, by Adolf Loosʼs realisations for wealthy clients in Pilsen. However, the inventive layout of the building, including the duplex apartment of the investor, in effect created a “villa in the house” and thus sufficient comfort for its users.
The exclusive nature of the buildng was already declared by the street frontage, whose fragile, richly glazed façade with balconies and conservatories received a luxurious travertine cladding. The interconnected first and second floors of Zejdaʼs apartment were connected to the basements and the ground floors of two apartments; the third and fourth floors always contained a pair of two-room apartments; the recessed top floor was complemented by a terrace. An electric lift and a staircase, illuminated by a glass-concrete surface in the face of the courtyard façade, ran through the entire building.
The central part of Zejdaʼs apartment consisted of a large, partly hall-like lounge area with a gallery, dominated by a fireplace drawn into the centre of the room and a large stained glass window with a figurative theme filling the entire height of two floors. The apartment also featured a luxuriously appointed living room with a mandorla-shaped courtyard bay window, which was partially glazed and provided access to the garden within the block via an external spiral staircase. Other rooms were illuminated by large windows and, in the case of the dining room on the lower floor and the bedroom on the upper floor, by conservatories.
After its nationalisation, the apartment was divided into five separate units; only some parts of it have been preserved in their original authentic form (the stair hall with a fireplace mantelpiece and stained glass windows and parts of the wooden panelling). Nevertheless, the building has been listed since 1995; in 2003-2004 the travertine cladding of the façade was replaced.
AW (translation by SG)
Selected literature
Martina Mertová, Proměny Přerova mezi dvěma světovými válkami aneb Jak si vedli domácí a jak hosté v napínavém architektonickém zápasu, in: Jan Janák – Jan Jeništa – Klára Jeništová et al., Kapitoly z výtvarné kultury města Přerova: Architektura, výtvarné realizace, design, Přerov 2016, pp. 8–23.
Petr Pelčák – Vladimír Šlapeta – Ivan Wahla (eds.), Elly Oehler/Olárová – Oskar Oehler/Olár. Architektonické dílo (exhibition catalogue), Brno – Olomouc 2007.
Michal Kohout – Stephan Stempel – Pavel Zatloukal (eds.), Česká republika. Architektura XX. století. Morava a Slezsko, Praha 2005, pp. 263, 285.
VV [Vladislava Valchářová], Elly Sonnenschein-Oehler (Olárová), in: Machonin Jan – Ryndová Soňa – Valchářová Vladislava – Vinterová Alena (eds.), Povolání: architekt[ka] (exhibition catalogue), Nová síň, Praha 2003, p. 88.
Sources
činžovní dům - Památkový Katalog (pamatkovykatalog.cz)
Martina Horáčková, Architektura střední Moravy, 1918–1945: Přerov, Kroměříž, Bystřice pod Hostýnem, Holešov, Kojetín (diploma thesis), Katedra teorie a dějin výtvarných umění FFUP, Olomouc 2004, pp. 69–70.
