Austro-Hungarian Bank

   
The new building for the Jihlava branch of the Austro-Hungarian Bank was built on the site of the bailey with a semicircular bastion of the city fortification, which separated the old town from the Špitálské suburb until about 1880. The place was called the Cat's Corner ("Am Katzenanger"). Soon after the city walls were torn down, Palackého Street (formerly Stein-Gasse) was staked out in a new street line providing space for new buildings. The Austro-Hungarian Bank had a branch in Jihlava from 1901, at the beginning located in the house at Palackého Street 27. In July 1913, after the government had bought all the adjacent land, a building permit was issued for a new building with a rear yard facing Divadelní Street (formerly Kapucínská Street), designed by Gustav Lang, an architect and builder from Jihlava. With his father, the builder Ignaz Lang, Gustav Lang also supervised the construction and its execution. The entire building was completed in April 1914, when the branch moved there. After 1918, it continued to be used for banking purposes under the Jihlava branch of the National Bank. Since the 1990s, the building has housed Komerční banka.

It is a three-storey building with a cellar, a segmentally rounded corner and a high mansard roof, with the main entrance to Palackého Street, which also originally served as the entrance to the courtyard. The ground floor served as the bank's facilities, including a flat for the "assistant", the first floor was used for the needs of the banking institute and the second floor, with a terrace facing the courtyard, was reserved as a flat for the branch director in the original plan. The concept of the ornamental façade with a bossage on the raised parterre, fluted giant order pilasters and fine ornamentation in the window axes has been preserved to this day. In the frontage, the dominant tympanum above the crown cornice represents two boys with a basket of fruit and snails in a deep relief as symbols of abundance and protection of property. It is an example of the modern classical Baroque style, popular mainly in the German environment and characterised by an attempt to distance itself from late historicism with modern forms. The back courtyard was surrounded by an enclosure wall with a circular brick gazebo. In the 1990s, the building underwent structural changes, mainly by building an extension in the courtyard with offices and a lift, ground-floor garages and modifications to the interiors according to the design drawn up by Fortis, s.r.o. under the direction of the Jihlava architect Jaroslav Huňáček.

JL
Literature and other sources 

Next buildings on the trail