Bohumil Panýrek’s freight forwarding and transport business building
1911 / 1932

The history of the former freight forwarding and transport company building of Bohumil Panýrek and his wife Marie, which stands on the corner of the present-day streets Budilova and Divadelní in close proximity to the municipal theatre warehouse designed by Hanuš Zápal (C2–330), reflects the industrial nature of this part of the city, which is still evident today. Panýrek had owned the original property and its extensive lands since before WWI. In 1911, the builder Karel Mastný converted part of the old Škoda Engineering Works building for Panýrek’s business and also adapted the original building of the theatre warehouse. Bohumil Panýrek made use of the building primarily as a warehouse and after WWI rented out part of it. The ground floor temporarily housed the West-Bohemian dairy company Západočeské sýrárny and the manufacturing and turning workshop of the Joiners’ Cooperative (Družstvo truhlářů), which had a lease on the premises up to 1929. At the end of the 1920s, the Panýreks began minor adaptations inside the building – in 1928, for example, the architect Karel Krůta converted part of the old warehouse into the freight forwarding offices. In 1932, however, the Panýreks decided to fundamentally convert and modernise the entire building. They sold part of the land with free-standing workshops adjacent to the theatre warehouse to a married couple, the Rezkovýs . The new owners decided to demolish the existing buildings, divide the land into three building sites and then build a three-storey residential house on one and on the other a courtyard building with a wheelwright workshop and a wood store. The City Council rejected the proposal, however, with the result that only the wheelwright workshop and wood store were built. This was because up until the 1930s the city had unsuccessfully attempted at every opportunity to acquire the Panýreks’ lands as well as the entire remainder of the city block in order to protect the new theatre warehouse building from further potential fires.

Panýrek commissioned the Pilsen architect Vladislav Šimáček to reconstruct the existing warehouse and offices. The atypical trapezoidal ground plan of the new four-storey building is due to its location in the corner of converging streets. The construction work was initiated in July 1932 and the building was completed by the end of the same year. The basement contained not only cellars, but also a spacious storage space and a boiler room with a freight elevator. In the rear of the ground floor was a spacious warehouse with a room for the warehouseman, an auction room and a drive-through passage linking Budilova Street with Divadelní Street. In the front, considerably narrowed part was a one-room caretaker’s flat, the company archive, a passenger elevator, cloakrooms and facilities for employees and six offices. On the floor above was storage space as well as a large flat with a kitchen, dining room, guest room, bedroom, children’s bedroom, bathroom, toilet and a small maid’s room. The next floor also held a one-room flat with a kitchen, and a customs clearance room and showroom. A laundry room was established in the loft on the side facing Budilova Street.

The Panýrek’s house makes an impression at first sight with its distinctly truncated main facade, in which the main entrance to the freight forwarding office was originally set. The austere smooth Purist facade is divided in relief by continuous string courses and a regular pattern of rectangular windows. The author of the plans accentuated both street-side facades with shallow two-storey high projecting sections above the first floor. The expanses of the facade are further “chopped up” with ledges separating the ground floor and the utilitarian loft from the first and second floors. Today, the facades of the end sections of the building, which contained warehouses, do not, despite the later installed glass blocks in the pattern of the fenestrations, deny the original function of the building. The building was capped in part with a pitch roof with three dormers facing Budilova Street, while the remainder had flat roofs that served on the other side as freely accessible terraces with iron tube railings, emphasising the Modernist character of the building, which it retains to this day.

AK
 

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