Masaryk Jubilee Schools (Masarykovy jubilejní školy)

   
The Czech school building was erected at the beginning of the 1930s on Štefánikovo Square, on the site of the former Elite cinema, the first cinema in Jihlava, later Hus House (Husův Dům), built in 1912 according to the project of Arthur Corazza. Not even the recent construction of a school on Havlíčkova Street helped to resolve the issue of the growing number of pupils in Jihlava and the demand for a school where Czech was the language of instruction. Therefore in 1928, the Central Office of the School Foundation (Ústředí Matice školské) invited tenders for a design of a building that would accommodate four schools in one – a municipal school and a primary school, each separately for boys and girls. The winning design was created by the Prague architect Alois Mezera, a student of Jože Plečnik, who had already had extensive experience in the design of school buildings. For Jihlava, Mezera designed a building that combined the post-Kotěra stream of modern classicism. The construction was carried out by Jindřich Knorr, a builder from Jihlava. The opening of the new school took place on 30 August 1931 and became a great national celebration. The building became a "jubilee"school for three reasons. It was opened on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Czechoslovak Republic, the thousandth anniversary of the Czech state from the time of St. Wenceslas (sv. Václav), and the 80th birthday of the first president.

The architect oriented the classrooms of the detached three-storey longitudinal building mostly towards the south side. On the north or courtyard side, he placed the studies, art room, toilets, and longitudinal connecting corridors. There was a common gymnasium on the ground floor. Two wings with separate boys' and girls' classrooms adjoined the main building. The head teacher’s office was upstairs in the east wing, and there was a nursery on the ground floor with a separate entrance. All this was complemented by the head teacher's detached house, which was converted into the after-school club in the 1960s. The window chambranles, connected in horizontal and vertical strips, stood out noticeably from the exterior smooth façade, giving the building a classical character. The building has undergone major readjustments. In 2005, the central wing was expanded into the courtyard with locker rooms and lifts on all floors up to the roof level. The remarkable vertical rows of windows have disappeared from the staircase avant-corps in the south frontage. The original building had a total of 18 classrooms, each designed for up to 52 pupils, so the school could accommodate up to 936 pupils in total. This capacity was significantly exceeded in the 1960s and 1970s, however, when pupils had to attend school in shifts.

On the occasion of the opening of the new Czech school, the Ministry of Education donated to the city of Jihlava a cast bronze bust of President T. G. Masaryk by the sculptor Jan Štursa. The statue stood in front of the building in the centre of the front façade and together with its granite pedestal reached a height of almost four metres. About three thousand Czech and two thousand German children in folk costumes attended the unveiling ceremony on 3 June 1934. Speakers at the ceremony included František Staněk, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and Jan Krčmář, Czech Minister of Education. The monument stood in front of the building until June 1939, when it had to be removed. Today, on the site of the former Masaryk monument, a bronze sculpture can be found titled Children with a Ballby the sculptor Marie Uchytilová-Kučová from 1986. During the German Protectorate, the school lost not only its original name but also Czech as the language of instruction. Later on, it changed its name several more times until it returned to the original Masaryk name in 1990.

JL
Literature and other sources 

Next buildings on the trail