House with a warehouse extension of Goldreich Brothers (Bratři Goldreichové)

 
In 1882, the town house on the corner of Benešova (Schillergasse) and Věžní (Zwingergasse) Streets was owned by Philipp and Josefine Popper. The house had a wide passage to the courtyard on the ground floor and an adjoining single-storey warehouse along Věžní Street. In 1922, the corner house with the warehouse on Benešova Street and the neighbouring house at no. 21 were acquired by Erwin Goldreich and Leo Haupt, who were brothers-in-law as well as partners in the haberdashery and knitwear shop GoldreichBrothers(Bratři Goldreichové). That same year, they applied to the city Building Authority for permission to build a new warehouse extension of similar dimensions on the site of the dilapidated warehouse building, with an additional backyard garage extension behind the passageway. They also applied for permission to renovate the house in order to adapt it to bank premises for a branch of Komerční banka and also for permission to renovate the street façades of both neighbouring houses. The plans for this building project were drawn up by Erwin's younger brother Richard, an architect and builder in Pardubice. The multi-storey former warehouse on Věžní Street is particularly remarkable. Only the perimeter walls remained of the previous building. The frontage was increased by one whole floor and finished with a straight beam roof. The extension does not lack other elements of industrial architecture either – the main frontage is punctuated by large factory windows. With the utilitarian warehouse building in pure modernist forms, the architect Richard Goldreich managed to subtly relate to the main town house in the historic built-up area, thanks in particular to the subtle modelling of the façade with lesene framing that supports the crown cornice. Goldreich derived the morphology of the façade in a simplified form from his newly designed classical façade of the main house, which has survived to this day. Noteworthy are the bars on the side windows on the ground floor, which are evidence of the original security of the bank and the original concept of the parterre according to the architect's design.

Because of their Jewish origin, the merchants were forced to close the knitwear shop in 1939 and sell it to Beata Pöpperlová, a German. Erwin Goldreich, who survived imprisonment in the Terezín concentration camp, asked for his house back after the war, but his request was not granted. Soon after that, he moved to Prague with his wife, Luisa. The house was then used by the Secondary Technical School of Mechanical Engineering (Vyšší průmyslová škola strojnická) in Jihlava and carpentry and blacksmith workshops were established there. From 1970, the former warehouse building housed the Secondary School of Economics (Střední škola ekonomická). Today, the whole building is used for commercial purposes and the former warehouse now houses the Na Hradbách restaurant.

JL
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