Around the mid-19th century, a burgher’s house stood on the site of the present-day “Ehrlich Palace” designed by the architect and designer Bořek Šípek. At that time the mill race Mlýnská strouha was still flowing in this area, but in the early 1920s it was filled in during regulation of the Radbuza River. In 1902, the house was bought by the Eisners, who established in it a shop selling butchers' and delicatessen equipment. The business was maintained successfully by their son Leopold, who in 1930 had the dining-room interior of a flat in the house designed by the celebrated Adolf Loos, undoubtedly following the example of his friends the Becks and the Hirschs. At the request of Leopold Eisner, his nephew, Kurt Unger, a final-year architecture student at the technical college in Prague, participated in the designing and implementation of the interior. Meeting Loos was a very important professional milestone for Unger.
Adolf Loos subordinated the arrangement of the space to a characteristically symmetrical design. Two sash windows set in a panelled wall were balanced on the opposite side by a wall with a fireplace, above which was set a multi-paned mirror. This arrangement was bordered on both sides by doors. The walls of the room were decorated with oak panelling combined with black and white marble cladding, which framed the entrance to the dining room from the library as well as the fireplace. Loos also used a multi-paned mirror in an alcove above a built-in cupboard opposite the entrance to the dining room. The architect conceived the space below the windows as a seating niche with a built-in white leather-covered couch and Windsor chairs arranged around a circular table.
Like members of some other Pilsen Jewish families, Leopold Eisner managed to emigrate in 1939 and found refuge in distant Bolivia. His property, which had been confiscated by the Nazis, was restituted to him after the war, but was subsequently nationalised by the communists in 1948. In the 1950s, the house was the headquarters of state agricultural and food production enterprises and offices. Although the valuable interior was listed in 1969 as a moveable cultural monument, its further existence was threatened by the planned demolition of the block of houses in Šafaříkovy sady to make way for an administrative centre. Although the municipal conservation committee decided that Loos’ dining room must be preserved even at the cost of moving it, it did not survive, because the furnishings were stolen in 1973 and the house was demolished a year later.
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Leopold Eisner