Grandhotel

   
This magnificently decorated building inside the city walls has a common builder, constructor, and designer. It was Vincenz Zeizinger, who used to put the addendum "apprenticed master bricklayer from Jihlava” under his signature. At the beginning of the century, he bought the neighbouring plot of land at the corner of Špitálská and Leopoldova Streets, now Komenského and Husova Streets, from the merchant Albert Schütz and embarked on a new project, for which three historic houses had to make way. The westernmost of them, located on Husova Street, was one of Jihlava’s former breweries. In the early 20th century, he added new temporary accommodation facilities, which were scarce in Jihlava at the time – offered since the Middle Ages, for example, by the Golden Star Inn (Zlatá Hvězda)with brewing rights, the Three Princes Inn(U Tří knížat)on Masarykovo Square, from 1864 also by Hotel Czapin the Panenské suburb (Workers’ House on Žižkova Street), built on the site of the DovecotInn(Na Holubníku), and until 1894 also by the Czech Besední House on Císaře Josefa Square (now Svobody Square), as well as the Habsburgand Parkhotelhotels. Zeizinger originally intended to call the hotel Central, but renamed it Grandhotelwhile preparations were still underway.

The new complex included a hotel and probably Zeizinger's own flat on Komenského Street. The main entrance to the hotel is situated on Husova Street. On the ground floor, in addition to the hotel lobby and café, he left space for five individual shops. The structure of the two-wing four-storey building with a cellar surprisingly retreated from the street line into Komenského Street. The sharp angle of the two main wings suited the designer well for softening and at the same time accentuating the corners with a cylindrical tower with a distinctive sculptural and stucco decoration. According to the plan, a statue of Mercury was to be placed on top of the tower, but in the end, it never happened. However, the generously conceived stucco decoration in Art Nouveau floral and geometric style, with cartouches on shallow avant-corps featuring the motif of a locomotive and a ship, has been preserved to this day. The dynamic decor of the early Art Nouveau façade corresponded to the builder's intention to appeal to and attract the upper social class, perhaps the progressive business elite who travelled by modern rail or boat. The layout basically followed advanced principles, i.e. all the facilities upstairs were located in the rear, less valuable wing facing the courtyard, yet with direct light, while the upstairs front wing facing the street was reserved for guest rooms. The building had a central heating system from the beginning. In the final phase of construction, Zeizinger extended the project by adding a sunroom with a veranda and a café area in the hotel courtyard.

The first hotelier was K. Ehrenhöfer. After the First World War, Zeizinger sold the hotel to Erwin Schulz's family, who ran it until the end of the Second World War. After 1945, the hotel was briefly managed by Erwin's son Hanuš Schulz. At that time, the corner building was connected operationally and in terms of layout with the ground floor of the neighbouring tenement house at Husova Street 3, which was also owned by the Schulz family. After 1948, the hotel was nationalised and its management was transferred to the national enterprise Czechoslovak Hotels (Československé hotely). In 1951, the company applied for a building permit to remodel the hotel, which among other internal modifications included the removal of the corner tower dome and the demolition of the courtyard wing of the building facing Husova Street. Fortunately, such a vigorous proposal was rejected on the basis of an expert opinion from the Stavoprojekt Jihlava office and the administrator just had to repair the façade and secure the dome. The interior of the building was modernised several times during that century, and the wing facing Komenského Street was raised one floor above the crown cornice in the 1990s. The Grandhotel has retained its original purpose from the beginning, and despite subsequent ownership changes, it is still used as a hotel.

After the successful start of his career as a master builder, Vincenz Zeizinger designed and built several other buildings in Jihlava. His construction business thrived until the First World War. Zeizinger designed, for example, two summer villas on Rudný Hill in what is now the Lesnov district – the now lost villa Pod Rozhlednou 6 in 1905, and the building on the isolated plain at Smrčenská 111 in 1910. Records also prove that he designed the villa at Legionářů Avenue 11 from 1910 and the now lost Edison cinema building from 1914–1915 at Havlíčkova Street 68. His style consisted in sophisticated work with façade decoration, frequent use of timber framing, tower oriel windows, and corner tower roundels.

JL
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