Extension of the Concord cooperative house
1924–1928 / 1932 / 1948 (demolished 2019)

In the first third of the 20th century, the originally rural settlement of Doubravka underwent a dynamic transformation in relation to the development of local industrial production, the influx of a new and primarily working-class population and the proximity of Pilsen, of which Doubravka became a part in 1924. The old village buildings gradually gave way to new family and apartment houses built both by individuals and construction cooperatives. At the same time, cultural life and various associations grew stronger here. Groups that were active in the area included the Svornost cooperative, which established its headquarters around 1910 in a house on the corner of today's Dílenská and Skalní streets, which was probably purchased from Janek Laňwany, who ran a restaurant on the ground floor of the building.

The two-storey corner house with a chamfered corner and an eclectic historicising facade was crowned by two Neo-Renaissance “picturesque” gables. As usual, on the ground floor level, both facades were finished in a robust ribbon bossage, while the remaining storeys had smooth plaster and tall rectangular windows with decorative cornices and ornaments. A niche was broken into the chamfered corner on the first floor, where the cooperative had an allegorical statue entitled “Svornost” (Unity) installed. The building housed club lounges and restaurants, but also several apartments located mainly upstairs. The site was surrounded by a courtyard and a spacious garden.

Intensive club activity soon required several construction modifications, the most important of which was to be the extension of the dance and theatre hall area, a project that was developed by the office of builder Václav Hajšman in 1914. The new part was to be connected to the existing building from the right, perpendicular to today's Skalní Street. The grand three-axis facade with a segmental gable in a historicising style with elements of Art Nouveau had a nearly “theatrical” character. However, the outbreak of the First World War prevented the cooperative from constructing the new building.

The Svornost cooperative continued with the plan in 1923, when it commissioned builder Rudolf Pěchouček, head of the Workers' Building, Production and Trade Cooperative in Pilsen, to prepare the project. In the design of the extension attached to the opposite side of the older house and oriented along Dílenská Street, Pěchouček applied the morphology of the original building to create an organic whole. His plans were not implemented, however, as the builder is signed under the completed project of the now no-longer-existent cooperative Workers' House from 1927.

In 1924 the Svornost cooperative started the construction of a gymnasium and club lounges according to a design probably prepared by the local builder Václav Baxa. He treated the exterior of the elongated building in a conservative style based on an architectural tradition. He segmented the symmetrical facade with tall rectangular windows and inter-window pilasters, topping them with a triangular gable with slightly rounded sides and a central oval window. He also accentuated the central axis with an unostentatious relief inscription “Svornost” under the crown cornice, and a lantern mounted on the ridge of the gable roof. In the two-wing layout of the new building, Baxa adhered almost entirely to Pěchouček's project – he concentrated the hall, the entrance corridor adjacent to the corner house and the stage in the street tract while the courtyard tract involved a meeting room, staircase and facilities. The cooperative did not receive a building permit until 1928. A year later, it planned further adaptation and extension of the building – this, however, probably never took place.

The building underwent further construction changes shortly after. First, in 1930, the cooperative set up a new passage and adapted the restaurant room in the “old” part. Two years later this room received a new “Brizolit” plaster facade, again probably according to Baxa's project. On the Building Authority’s recommendation, the builder composed its relief elements in such a way that “the predominant horizontal organisation of the entire front did not look overly monotonous”. Both Neo-Renaissance gables were taken down, the facades were cleaned and cleared of their original decor, and the chamfered corner was accentuated by a low parapet wall. In 1948, the cooperative had a part of the courtyard “hall” wing modified according to the project of builder Jan Albl, who extended the operational facilities.

In 1958 the cooperative house was listed as a heritage site as a monument to the history of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (this protection was revoked in 1996). Before the First World War, it was used by the Social Democrats, but as early as in the 1920s it served as a centre for Pilsen’s communists, gymnasts and amateur actors of the Federation of Workers' Physical Education Unions. During Nazi occupation, Svornost became a temporary home for German anti-fascists from the Sudetenland, and the second district committee of the Communist Party in Pilsen settled here in 1945.

Likely in connection with the heritage listing of the building and the workers' roots of the Svornost cooperative, a project of converting the hall section to a “workers' museum” arose in the municipal construction company Stavoprav in 1959. The hall, side room and vestibule have never been turned into exhibition spaces, unlike the architecturally modest courtyard extension with sanitary facilities and a new “entrance pergola” from Dílenská Street, which was attached to the northern front of the former side room and, by stepping it back from the street line, distinctly formed a small fenced “front garden”.

In 1965 the architect Čestmír Rypl prepared a project based on a preliminary design by engineer Laniar for adding a workshop to the extension and an extra storey to the courtyard tract of the hall part for the needs of Svazarm (Union for Cooperation with the Army). The former collaborator of Le Corbusier placed several club rooms and a classroom in the superstructure, and a workshop for a car club in the extension. In addition, he designed a new boiler room with a coal room at the former side hall. The construction work carried out as a volunteer project was followed by a reconstruction of the restaurant in the years 1968-1969.

For years, the building functioned as the local focus of social and cultural life; it hosted balls, dance classes, and also rock concerts. It served its purpose even after the Velvet Revolution. The last cultural events took place there at the turn of the century. The following years saw the site gradually fall into disrepair. In 2015, the state sold it to a private owner, who decided to build a new apartment building on the site and had it torn down in 2019.

AW – PK

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Monument preservation

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