Commercial and apartment building on Kollárova Street
1930–1931

In 1931 the five-storey commercial and apartment building of one of Pilsen Jewish entrepreneurs was completed in Kollárova Street. The stationary wholesaler commissioned the talented architect of Jewish origin Leo Meisl (1901–1944) to draft the plans. The building represented one of the first important realisations of the architect, who was one of the youngest generation of Pilsen interwar architects to fully reflect in their work trends in the contemporary architectural scene in Prague. Unlike some of his contemporaries, however, Meisl always imprinted his buildings, despite their functional design and non-ornamental forms, with an undeniable artistic, aesthetic quality. One excellent example of Meisl's art is his own apartment house built in 1936–1938, which he had originally designed for Zdeňka Ledererová (C3–2185).

Together with the neighbouring corner house of Antonín Kreysa (C2–2116), erected in 1935–1936, the new building brought to Kollárova Street one of several interwar examples of Modern architecture. Meisl divided up the smooth, austere Purist facade on each storey with only a regular pattern of rectangular three-light windows. He broke up the simple cube of the building by setting the uppermost floor back slightly, thus creating space for a narrow terrace. While the ground floor of the building with display windows and a drive-through passage into the courtyard served for purely commercial purposes (the owner probably conducted his own business there), the upper floors held tenants’ flats. At the present time, the parterre of the building is devalued by recent tasteless modifications, which impact insensitively on the original unified character of the building.

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