Towards the end of the 1920s the Pilsen construction firm of František Jenč, František Hladeček and František Kroft already had a rich history of building activities, especially in the area of development of apartment houses and commercial properties. Their projects of the period reached a culmination in their pair of houses at Nos. 3 and 5 on the north side of Čechova Street, which the firm built for its own purposes and at its own cost in 1929–1930 according to plans by an unknown architect.
The five-storey houses have a unifying purist facade with longitudinal, richly profiled geometric frames running the whole width of the individual storeys and corresponding with the horizontals of the neighbouring houses. They also sit well among the surrounding buildings due to the use of a cornice lined up with those of the adjacent buildings and the pattern of the apparently receding mass of the roof construction, which is hidden from street view above the cornice and respects the height regulation of the development.
The houses originally had four commercial spaces on the ground floor and 16 flats in the upper storeys. The flats were of various sizes; while there were grand four-room flats, each with a spacious hallway, hygienic facilities and a maid’s room, on the first and second floors, the third and fourth floors had more modest three-room flats and studio flats.
AŠ
Jenč – Hladeček – Kroft