About the site
The junction of Hrnčířská and Ostrožná streets, where they meet Horní náměstí (Upper Square), has been an important point in the street network of Opava’s historic core since the Middle Ages, although it lay outside the original development of the city’s two main squares. On this prominent corner once stood the Benešovský House, and it was here, in the 1920s, that Czech bookseller František Havlický commissioned the construction of a modern building of metropolitan scale.
Originally four storeys high, and today partly extended to five, the two-wing rental apartment block has a dynamically rounded corner emphasized at ground level by the entrance to the retail premises, with continuous bands of balconies above. It faces the street intersection towards Horní náměstí (Upper Square). The first two lofty storeys were occupied by prestigious commercial spaces – Havlický’s bookshop and the Orient Café – continuing the area’s long-standing café tradition.
Structurally, the building combines brick masonry with a reinforced-concrete frame. The balconies project beyond the façade and are defined by plain rendered balustrades forming continuous horizontal bands. Stylistically, the building reflects the architect’s uncertainty as to which idiom to adopt. It is a transitional work, poised between tradition and decorativism on the one hand, and the dynamism and austerity of emerging modernism on the other. The more traditional forms are evident in the vertical emphasis of the window openings, the cornices, and the modelling of small decorative brackets. The modern dynamism of purist and functionalist expression is most apparent in the horizontal balcony bands and the largely undecorated façades. Dynamic forms of this kind – already promoted in German expressionist architecture, notably in the work of Erich Mendelsohn and other avant-garde architects – were a favoured feature of modern buildings at the time. The combination of these opposing tendencies reflects both the search for an appropriate contemporary expression and the client’s ambition to introduce architecture to Opava’s historic centre that matched the spirit of the age.
The building was damaged during the wartime events of the first half of 1945. It was remodelled to designs by the Nekvasil Construction Company in 1947 as the Orient Hotel, with part of the structure raised by an additional storey. A snack bar was installed at ground level, a night bar in the basement, the café retained, and the remainder of the building adapted to hotel use. Between 1992 and 1995, it underwent further alterations for banking purposes, involving changes to the plan, façades, and street frontage.
The building’s most valuable feature is its dynamically composed façade with horizontal balcony bands and rounded corner – originally emphasized at street level by a glazed main entrance to the bookshop. The project marked the street junction with a purist, dynamically modern architecture that bridged the emerging avant-garde with the evolving tradition and decorativism of the late 1920s.
MSt
