Post Office

The modest and modern post office building was built at the Main Train Station according to the project by the Brno architect Miloslav Kopřiva and its construction was supervised by the Jihlava builder Karel Rejchrt. After many years of negotiations, prolonged by the railway's land claims from 1925, the Ministry of Post was finally able to initiate a tender for its design in 1931. The three-storey building was fully dedicated to mail handling on the ground floor, while the middle part was occupied by a hall where mail carts entered directly from the tracks. From the ground floor, the lift took the mail to the sorting room on the first floor, which was connected to the counter room and offices. The second floor with a small terrace offered accommodation facilities for senior staff. The roof of the building was mostly occupied by another terrace, accessible from the elevated north wing. A public call-office adjoined the building from the outer platform front. Two goods lifts were added soon after the final inspection. The vertical strip window on the staircase in the building frontage was later replaced with glass blocks. The latest renovation in the 1990s added a roof extension with a sloping roof, several round windows, and a distinctive canopy over the entrance that extended halfway up the side walls of the building. The building thus lost its original austere, formally purist appearance. The national emblem – a ceramic relief of the Czech two-tailed lion by the academic sculptor Josef Axmann – has been preserved above the entrance to this day.

The architect Miloslav Kopřiva applied formal austerity in the Jihlava post office building, based directly on the building’s function, as well as on the shapes and simple materials. The stylish concept of the post office building confirms the architect's close relationship to contemporary Dutch architecture, especially to buildings designed by Jan Wils. In a similar spirit, Kopřiva created several buildings in Moravia in the 1920s, such as the savings bank in Kyjov and the hospital cash office in Uherský Ostroh. At the same time, however, the architect's earlier close relationship with the Brno section of the Devětsil association is still reflected here – the brick railings with retained strip openings, the round window, the smooth white façade, and the overall coherence of the materials testify to the purist concept of Kopřiva's project.

JL