C097

APARTMENT BUILDING WITH SHOPS 1928

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Otto Eisler designed an administrative and residential facility for the Phoenix Life Insurance Company in Běhounská Street in 1927. This type of multi-purpose urban building was developed in part due the Building Act guaranteeing substantial subsidies to corporate administrative facilities featuring a prescribed number of apartment units.
This seven-level terraced building on an irregular ground plan faces Běhounská and Kozí streets. The purist facade divided by a tall travertine base on the first floor conceals diverse functional purposes. The ground floor was designed as a commercial area featuring several privately owned shops with graceful portals, large display windows and interesting entrances. The mezzanine, broken by several spacious square windows, housed a large tailor's studio with a shop, sewing rooms, cutting room, ironing room and numerous changing rooms with a waiting lounge for customers. The first floor was occupied by the insurance company's offices, cash desks, a physician's surgery and a conference room. The ferro-concrete structure gave the architect freedom to design the interiors on each floor to suit the particular functional requirements.
The purist design of the facade represents a lightened variation of Ernst Wiesner's administrative buildings, which are alluded to in the classicist base and travertine facing. The extent of the inspiration from a more traditional architectural style is evident in the first of Eisler's designs for the facade with classicist flat column decorations and coffer crown molding.