The Savings and Credit Bank building, located in the centre of the town, near T. G. Masaryk Square, is an example of decorative tendencies in the modern architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. The local builder and architect Robert Motka designed a modern representative building with a characteristic articulated façade for the oldest savings institution in Moravia.
The Savings Bank building was built by the oldest money institution in Přerov, founded by tradesmen, which was also the oldest savings bank in Moravia. It was the establishment of the Přerov Savings Bank (1861) that initiated the establishment of other Moravian-Silesian savings banks. It became a sponsor not only of agriculture, trade, crafts, and industry, but also of cultural life through the support it provided to a number of associations, including Sokol. Thanks to the financial support provided by the Savings Bank, the Municipal House was also built in Přerov, near which the Savings Bank had its own representative building, directly opposite the church of St. Lawrence.
The local builder and architect Robert Motka was chosen to build it. In pre-war Přerov, he was one of the three most prominent practitioners of modern construction and architecture, realising public buildings, industrial buildings, and private villas. On the façade of the Savings Bank we can see the influences of inland decorative currents, but also, for example, of Dutch Neoplasticism. We can also assume that Motka was inspired by the buildings of the Post and Telegraph Office in the same street by the Brno architect Miloslav Kopriva from 1923-1926, which have elements of constructivism and national style, but also features of industrial architecture.
The four-storey row building has a three-winged plan enclosing a courtyard area. The side buttresses with rounded inner edges, whose shape was followed by the running corner windows, added a welcome plasticity to the symmetrical façade. Rounded shapes also appear in the detail, for example in the lesene frame that encloses the first- and second-floor windows in the central part of the façade. The richly-glazed parterre with large windows, behind which the offices were located, was complemented by reliefs with allegories of Industry, Thrift, and Agriculture by Myslbekʼs pupil František Mádle. The offices were located on the first floor, while the remaining two floors housed flats for the clerks. Part of the interior was decorated with ceiling stucco decorations.
In 1948 Vladimír Samohýl, a builder from Přerov, carried out modifications to the layout. Over the years, an insensitive sturdy extension was added, which changed the proportions of the top floor. The parterre likewise underwent modification, during which it was fitted with a protruding glass surface without significant articulation, but fortunately with the sandstone reliefs retained. After the Savings Bank, the building housed the Moravian-Silesian Stone Industry company for a short while, but then the building returned to its original purpose and the Investment Bank made its home there; nowadays it is the seat of the Czechoslovak Commercial Bank. The building has been protected since 1995.
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.
Pavel Zatloukal, K přerovské moderní architektuře, Kultura Přerova XXIII, 1980, č. 11, pp. 169–170.
Jan Jirka, Úvěrní spolek záložna v Přerově, in: Josef Kovařík – Jan Kratoň – Bedřich Jelínek (eds.), Přerov: Přerovsko-Kojetínsko, Brno 1933, pp. 137–138.
Sources
záložna - 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. 37–38.
