Villa of Theodora Němcová

The builder of the villa at no. 150 was Theodora Němcová, daughter of the Czech writer Božena Němcová. Theodora had moved to Jičín in 1863 and began to work here as a handicraft teacher at the newly established private secondary school for girls, and subsequently as a teacher at Czech-speaking elementary schools.

Theodora spent her whole life in Jičín. In 1894 she bought an extensive piece of land along the road to Sobotka, at that time an entirely undistinguished locality on the outskirts of town. As Jičín grew, however, the situation changed: the area behind Kníže Pond gradually became a well-heeled suburb, designated for building villas and single-family homes. By dividing the extensive tract and selling off building plots (HP144), Theodora – living alone, and entirely from her modest teacher’s salary – raised the funds to build her own, long-dreamed of home with a garden.

In 1910 she turned to the well-established architect Dušan Jurkovič, who designed for her a simple single-storey home with attic living space. The finishing touches of the design process, to secure its certificate of occupancy, were performed by the Kolín building contractor František Mošna, who later, alongside Václav Fejfar – master carpenter, former mayor and friend of Theodora – also carried out the construction. In granting the building permit, municipal engineer Bedřich Pek lamented the current architectural trends (“Today, in the age of Art Nouveau, any effort to speak out against the façade we see designed here would be entirely futile”). The building was completed in June 1911.

This villa, with a partial cellar and attic living quarters, built on a rectangular floorplan, has a mansard roof decked in fired tiles, with a semi-hipped roof, set into the gabled eastern frontage.  Straight away, the original conceptual design, in which Jurkovič envisaged a layered, decoratively carved, wooden gable on the building’s western frontage, underwent a certain simplification. The reason for its abandonment is not known. Perhaps the complexity of the feature gave master carpenter Fejfar cold feet. It might simply have been a lack of money. Thus one of Jurkovič’s characteristic features, drawn from the inspirations of folk architecture, was sacrificed. On the other hand, another essential aspect of the architect’s design did materialise: the partitioning of the facades, including the corner avant-corps; the mansard roof with the little dormers; as well as the general layout, with the large living spaces downstairs and the smaller rooms above. Also surviving from the original design was the high socle from sandstone blocks.

After Theodora Němcová’s death in 1920, the villa passed through several hands, until it was bought in 1935 by a teacher at the Commercial College, Miroslav Dušek. That same year he requested permission to rearrange the internal layout of the building (design and realisation by František Holeček, 1938) by partitioning the ground floor, replacing the original staircase with another, and substituting the shed roof above the veranda on the southern garden-facing façade with a balcony accessed from the attic.

The villa still rewards us as a fine example of a modest residence of the Czech Art Nouveau. The fencing around the property is also an integral part of the site.