The new building of the Jordán department store, with František Jeřábekʼs café, situated on an exposed and urbanistically valuable plot of land in the town centre, was unusually grand for its time. It brought a big city spirit to Přerov and became a popular destination for the townspeople and the inhabitants of its surroundings. The local author Robert Motka skilfully combined echoes of modernism in the style of Jan Kotěra with progressive functionalist morphology, as evidenced, for example, by the charming motif of the tubular railing on the large terrace.
Bohuslav Jordán, a chemist, had a department store built in Mostní Street. Because of its size, modern design. and location in this busy street, leading to todayʼs T. G. Masaryk Square, the Jordán department store had the potential to become the main commercial centre of the town. Jeřábekʼs establishment was to be the first modern and big city-style café in Přerov. The building fulfilled these expectations. It became a popular shopping destination for the townspeople and the population of the surrounding area, and the café turned into a centre for all the intelligentsia of the area.
Bohuslav Jordán approached the local builder and architect Robert Motka, who was one of the three main practitioners of modern architecture and construction in Přerov in the 1920s and 1930s. He was responsible not only for public buildings, but also industrial buildings and private villas. Motka had to contend with a large plot of land located on a bend on a busy street that could no longer cope with its traffic. New buildings that replaced old ones had to respect the considerable curvature and widening of the roadway. The architect decided to copy the radius of the road using a reinforced concrete structure. In the cladding of the new building, with its elongated windows and lattice masonry, we can still see the inspiration of late “Kotěra-style” modernism, but the authorʼs inclination towards functionalism is already evident in the construction and the emphasis on the communication and urban aspect of the project.
On the ground floor Motka placed four shops with Jordanʼs chemistʼs, a dry-cleanerʼs, and a silk shop also occupying the gallery on the mezzanine, while at the same time there was a main staircase and a connecting corridor leading to a spiral staircase for the residential floors. The façade of the ground floor consisted of large glass shopfronts punctuated by four entrances. The entire first floor was occupied by Jeřábekʼs café, which was spread out in an open space over four metres high. It was illuminated by twelve large vertical sash windows, grouped in pairs and divided by columns of lattice masonry. Motekʼs handwriting could also be seen in the design of the interiors, which were furnished by the local furniture company Zapadlo. He placed cushioned boxes with marble tables under the windows, while several seats with round tables stretched down the centre of the café. Adjacent to the open space there was a ladiesʼ lounge with upholstered booths and a games room with several tables for gambling and billiards. The space of the café was filled with the sounds of music from a raised gallery, beneath which a box office, snack bar, and a phone booth and kitchen were concealed. The second floor of the building was given over to two comfortable apartments that were illuminated by a number of windows. The last floor was designed as a double terrace with service areas and a one-room apartment. Viewed from the street, the whole of the extensive building was crowned by an airy structure of columns and tubular railings, which, together with the arches of the pergolas, transported the observer to a dream world of luxury on ocean liners.
After 1935, because of financial difficulties, František Jeřábek sold the café to František Vojanc, who, following the example of other more famous businesses, renamed it Avion in 1936. During the 1940s the café changed hands several times and after February 1948 it was nationalised. Over the following decades, the ground-floor retail space was replaced by many shops that one is still reminded of by unsightly advertising posters. Most of the shops are empty, with only the Avion restaurant serving its original purpose. Changes in the division of the shopfronts have led to the loss of the original symmetry of the building, but the upper floors of the façade still look authentic, including the columns of lattice masonry. Given the urban and architectural qualities described above, the building deserves conservation or sensitive rehabilitation.
TH (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.
Vladimír Šlapeta – Pavel Zatloukal, Moderní architektura v Přerově, Památky a příroda 3, 1981, pp. 129–140.
Jordánův obchodní dům, in: Josef Kovařík – Jan Kratoň – Bedřich Jelínek (eds.), Přerov: Přerovsko-Kojetínsko, Brno 1933, p. 200.
První velkoměstská kavárna v Přerově otevřena, Haná XXIII, 1932, č. 62, 15. 3., p. 2.
Sources
obchodní a obytný dům s kavárnou - Památkový Katalog (pamatkovykatalog.cz).
První městská kavárna Avion, Putování historií, Televize Přerov 31.5.2022, První městská kavárna AVION | Televize Přerov s.r.o. (tvprerov.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. 57–58.