Apartment building with Čeněk Musil’s architectural office

Inside this three-storey apartment building was where Čeněk Musil himself lived, and where, from 1929, he ran his office, originally based (from 1923) in Lepařova (today’s Revoluční) Street. Besides Musil, the building was also home to Jaroslav Bendák, director of the local savings bank Obecní spořitelna jičínská. This institution commissioned the building, and simultaneously erected at the far end of the garden (a single plot) house no. 465 on Jungmannova Street with a very similar layout – side staircase and one flat per floor. They were almost identical. From a long hall and corridor were accessed three street-facing rooms, pointing toward the garden was one room and the kitchen, with an entrance to the maid’s rooms and pantry, WC/bathroom, complemented with a terrace and a balcony. On the first and second floors was additionally a storeroom, accessible from the third room and from the bathroom. Owing to the vestibule and stairwell, this storeroom was absent on the ground floor.

The façade is dominated by the oriel window with its flag brackets, running to the right are the protruding and, at the ends, rounded apron cornices, evoking the bridge of a ship. These are furnished with miniature handrails and aesthetically effective semi-circular wrought iron details – a characteristic Purist nautical symbol. Another effective detail are the grates across the basement windows, letting light into the cellars. We can find many identical variations in other apartment buildings and dwellings (e.g. on the houses by the river on the Irmy Geisslové Embankment). Nor do these buildings lack the crowning cornice on each side, here supported with a single massive quarter-cylinder, or the characteristic fair faced brickwork, which in this case is used over the whole height of the ground floor, and which corresponds, colour-wise, with the details described above and at the same time in its contrast to the pale, smooth façade. The ground floor, unlike those above, also differs with an alternative rhythm in the window arrangement, which is of course related to the different internal layout. 

After the death of Čeněk Musil in November 1947, his office space was taken up by his son Zdeněk (1921), also architect, who very likely had earlier collaborated with his father. However, he was more devoted to photography than design. We know that he continued to practice here as late as 1952, nonetheless, over the years that followed these large flats were split in two, whereupon the fate of the office is unknown.

(GA)