Detached house

The garden quarter of Čeřovka is Čeněk Musil’s masterpiece of urbanism. Nonetheless, just as was commonly the case in other towns where similar “colonies” (i.e. estates) were developing, individual homes in Čeřovka were also being designed not just by a single architect (Musil), but by many other Jičín architects, for example, Josef Resl, Karel Vorel, Vladimír Studený and František Šikola, and also the Prague building designer Karel Pavlišta.

The quarter began to expand in 1927. Čeněk Musil created designs for standardised detached or semi-detached houses for the for the Construction Cooperative of Workers’ and Families’ Houses in Jičín and its Surroundings (Stavební družstvo dělnických a rodinných domků pro Jičín a okolí) as well as some individually conceived buildings. One such is the building financed by Božena Tomková and Elsa Collinová. Especially interesting is the stand-alone placement in the centre of the garden. Together with the semi-circularly terminated avant-corps stairwell in the north-western façade, that we can still see today, our gaze is initially drawn to the terrace and winter garden, owing to which, and owing also to the building’s internal layout, the house strikes us as being more villa-like than Musil’s other homes.

The façades, differentiated according to the function of individual rooms by the varied rhythms of the classical window forms, with jambs of fair faced brickwork, portholes and a sandstone socle, screen the formal rooms downstairs and the living quarters on the first floor.

(GA)