Tenement houses of the state tobacco factory

   
The state tobacco factory had six tenement houses in a block near Štefánikovo Square designed for its employees by the architect Vladimír Bolech in 1926 and 1927. The company had been operating in Jihlava since 1851 and it was the largest company there for a long time (for example, in 1900, it employed about two thousand people). In the period of the First Republic, its efforts in the field of employee care can be considered extraordinary. In addition to these tenement houses, the company built a modern spa for its employees to use free of charge, and provided them with protective work clothes and canteen meals.

The construction of the four-storey brick houses was carried out by the Jihlava engineer Jaroslav Čeleda from 1927–1929, i.e. before the outbreak of the economic crisis. In the building plans, the houses were always designed in pairs and built in sequence accordingly – from the corner of Mahlerova Street and the gently sloping Malátova Street, the houses gradually filled the vacant plot up to Štefánikovo Square, where they adjoined Mrs Honsigová's house from 1927.

Bolech designed the façades of the houses as one architectural unit, which differs only slightly from the houses facing Malátova and Mahlerova Streets. The division of the façade by horizontal strips and the use of white facing bricks between the windows and on the outer parts of the corner houses are particularly unifying elements. As for the houses in Mahlerova and Malátova Streets, the architect accentuated the central axis with a recessed entrance niche and loggias, which are now mostly glazed. These openings also interrupt the continuous line of the distinctive strips. In the corner house on Mahlerova Street, Bolech divided the loggia space with a brick partition, to which the continuous strip is reconnected, creating the impression of a pillar. An interesting detail are the metal flagpoles fixed on these houses with the year of completion 1928 and 1929.

The houses facing Štefánikovo Square, which were the last to be completed in this complex, have a different ground floor level. Thus, although they are architecturally unified, they are taller than their neighbouring houses by about 120 centimetres. The composition is also different, with the staircase halls being permeated with tall glass avant-corps concentrated at the edges of the houses, with the axis of the loggias always attached.

Into the double-section layout of the complex, the architect managed to fit in 66 flats with one or two living rooms, a separate kitchen, a hallway, sanitary facilities, a pantry, and a balcony or loggia. The individual flats also had a cellar space and a common laundry room in the attic. Originally, gas piping, water piping, and electric lighting were installed in the house. Heating was provided by a tiled stove in each flat separately.

In the context of the interwar period in Jihlava, this complex of houses can be considered one of the most architecturally complete and at the same time the most successful achievement. From an aesthetic point of view, the houses are rather modest, focused on economy and functionality, not lacking in the modern proportional and material qualities that the architect Bolech undoubtedly imprinted on them. This is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that right at the beginning of the 1930s, the Třebíč architect František Brázda adopted the appearance of Bolech's houses, including the materials used, and applied it to two tenement houses built for the Generally Beneficial Building Cooperative for Rantířov and its surroundings (Obecně prospěšné stavební a bytové družstvo pro Rantířov a okolí)in the opposite block at Malátova Street 7 and Štefánikovo Square 9. Compared to the models, however, the houses are somewhat lacking in the quality of their proportions.

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