Johann I. Christ's villa

The multi-storey villa, which today serves as the rectory of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, was built between 1883 and 1884 according to the plans drawn up by Franz Lang and Ignaz Lang. It was commissioned by Johann I. Christ, a German iron merchant. He decided to replace his existing house on Vrchlického Street, formerly Bräuhausgasse, with a new building on the site.

In 1911, the villa was bought by the German congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession, which was founded in Jihlava in 1877 as a follow-up to the Los von Rom movement. It was consecrated on 29 October 1911. The church owned and used the building until 1946, when the church officially ceased to exist in our territory and a large part of its members were displaced. After the war, the rectory, together with the nearby Evangelical church, was transferred to the administration of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, which maintained close relations with the German congregation and from 1929, even shared the same place of worship with them. The building has undergone many modifications, from more or less significant interior interventions (e.g. in 1946, partitions on the first floor were shifted; in 1950, the partition on the ground floor was pulled down; in 2015, the ground floor underwent complete reconstruction) to the repair of the roof truss, replacement of the roofing (2006), and the original windows (2008). However, the most radical intervention in the 1970s was the replacement of the authentic segmented and ornamental façade with a unified scratched and coloured plaster, which undermined the high monumental value of the original building. This irreversible structural change became the main reason for not declaring the building a cultural monument in 2005. In the 1970s, the villa’s relationship with its surroundings also changed – the original enclosure wall with a gate on the central axis of the entrance frontage was demolished during the construction of neighbouring prefabricated concrete buildings. The building is now located in a freely accessible garden, whose intimate character has been preserved, at least to some extent, thanks to landscaping.

The villa-type building from the end of the 19th century is usually described as a representative of a more interesting line of historicist architecture and its style is classified as Neo-Renaissance. The main frontage, opening towards Vrchlického Street, was conceived by the architects as a triaxial façade with an entrance avant-corps in the centre. The arched front door is raised above the surrounding ground level by steps and covered by a portico formed by a pair of Tuscan columns and an airy balcony with an original wrought-iron grille. On the ground floor and on the first floor, the avant-corps is complemented on both sides by a single lesene frame with a round window in its centre. The entire avant-corps is topped with a compressed segmental gable, and a small round skylight on its central axis. Both parts of the entrance façade, extending along the sides of the avant-corps, were conceived by the architects as flat and simple, with one arched window on the ground floor and a rectangular window on the first floor. The moderately designed building as it is today originally had a more expressive architectural structure and richer decoration. While the central avant-corps was worked with floral motifs covering the surfaces of the lesene frames, the architects arranged the non-projecting parts of the entrance façade with a bossage. Modifications from the 1970s deprived the building, among other things, of the classical cornices and decorative window jambs and doors with voussoirs and gables above the windows.

The frontage facing the garden follows the layout of the entrance façade with minor deviations. Due to the absence of an avant-corps, it is flatter and the increased number of windows in the central part contributes to its better ventilation. The entrance is also raised above the ground level by means of stairs, but it is complemented by an uncovered veranda, which allows the residents to relax comfortably in the garden. This side of the house also underwent a radical transformation in the 1970s. The building lost not only part of its decor, bossage, cornices, and jambs, but also its four ornamental vases at the entrance. Above all, however, the massive compressed gable that topped the entrance part of the façade between the first floor and the ground floor disappeared. The only feature that has survived to this day is a circular medallion with a woman's head, which can be found above the door – in the place that was originally demarcated by a now defunct shield.

The interior of the ground floor now houses a large choir room, which was created by connecting several original smaller rooms. There are also sanitary facilities and the rector's office. In the original floor plan, which changed over the years, each floor contained a main hall, two side rooms, two offices, and sanitary facilities. The rector's flat on the first floor of the villa still partly corresponds to this layout.

AB