About the site
In 1905, the Opava municipal tramway began operation, linking Horní náměstí (Upper Square) with the later Alhambra cinema in Kateřinky. Powered by direct current converted from alternating current at the municipal power station on Krnovská Street, the line was later extended to the city park and supplemented by a second route from Opava’s Northern Railway Station (now Opava Východ) via Ostrožná and Olomoucká streets to the Provincial Hospital, and eventually as far as the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital. From 1912, a third route connected the theatre with the municipal cemetery. The gradual expansion of the network created the need for a converter station located in the city centre at the junction of all the lines, near Horní náměstí (Upper Square).
A modest single-storey building with a reinforced-concrete frame infilled with brickwork and finished in břízolit (roughcast render) was erected in 1929 at Rybí trh (Fish Market), behind the then municipal library (a former Marian Institute). Architect Erich Geldner gave the building a modernist character, with façades articulated by flat pilaster frames containing pairs of rectangular windows in their upper sections. The interior is equally austere, with a reinforced-concrete beam ceiling and two rows of mercury rectifiers, transformers, and high-speed circuit-breakers manufactured in 1905 by AEG Berlin and installed in the station in 1931, having been relocated from the original converter station.
The building is a unique industrial heritage monument, retaining its original equipment as well as operational and structural elements. It remained in service until 1985, and in 1990 it was entered in the register of cultural monuments.
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