In 1913, Adolf and Olga Fuchs obtained permission to demolish the building at Kapucínské náměstí 14 in order to build a modern commercial and apartment building in its place. Adolf Fuchs was a prominent Brno merchant of Jewish origin who sold fabric, men’s and women’s undergarments and a variety of other textile goods. He commissioned the building’s design from one of Brno’s finest architects at the time, Bohumír F. A. Čermák. It is Čermák’s most progressive pre-war building, and the facade design for the commercial ground floor in particular has a previously unseen expressive and modernist appearance.
The narrow, wedge-shaped parcel, squeezed tightly between the blocks of the neighbouring buildings, had a frontage just 11 metres wide. In response, Čermák designed a tall five-storey building (with a mezzanine level above the ground-floor shops) so that the available space could be fully utilized, with extensive commercial and storage spaces on the ground floor, mezzanine, and the floors above. Only the two upper floors, set off by a cordon ledge, were reserved for apartments. As with Čermák’s other apartment buildings from this period, this one had three window bays and a central oriel. The polygonal oriel topped by a cupola spans the three upper floors and enlarges and enhances the residential spaces. Čermák deftly used the oriel to visually connect the two functionally separate parts of the building by extending it down to the upper-most commercial level, where the rounded windows decorated with a metal railing sit on top of a massive corbel.
The main shop premises on the ground floor and mezzanine consist of an almost monolithic glass surface, with similarly expansive rectangular windows on the two floors above that (also used as commercial spaces). The modest décor on the building’s top two residential storeys reflects Čermák’s typically economical use of decorative elements concentrated on the apron walls (recessed areas or smooth surfaces with centrally placed ovals). The only decorative elements on the commercial part of the facade, which was very modernist and progressive for its time, are the four putti statues symbolizing industry (the figures holding a hammer and a cogwheel) and commerce (one figure with attributes of the ancient god of commerce Mercury and one holding a full purse). The apartments’ interiors were furnished with items from Čermák’s Artistic Crafts Workshop, and the contemporary press was particularly impressed by the lighting fixtures made not of metal, as was customary at the time, but of wood. This choice of material produced original lighting fixtures characterized by simple forms made only from carved and perforated wood panels.
The Adolf Fuchs building was inaugurated on 27 March 1914. It boasted state-of-the art technology such as central heating and a goods elevator and stood out for its tall glass shop windows. The building was Čermák’s last major commission before the outbreak of the First World War.
Although the fortunes of the Adolf Fuchs company fluctuated, the department store on Kapucínské náměstí remained open throughout the interwar period. The poor economic situation after the end of the First World War resulted in cost-of-living protests, strikes and hunger riots in May 1919, during which Fuchs’s premises narrowly escaped being looted. Other businesses on Masarykova Street were not so lucky. A contemporary newspaper report described the scene: ‘It was all highly charged. A mass of workers and citizens arrived at Freedom Square, where the people were addressed from several tribunes. There were red banners and gallows with the words ‘profiteers’ on them. A perfectly fashioned guillotine. Effigies of profiteers on candelabras, actual profiteers below the gallows with nooses around their necks and fiery accusations shouted by workers against them. In all the surrounding streets, there were crowds of people (…). Then the tense events on Capuchin Street, at the Fuchs shop, where people demanded that the shop be opened. The soldiers held back the people. Calls by the organizers for the people to leave the place went unheeded. Our editor’s appeal that the matter of selling goods should be settled by representatives of the people and officials from the governor’s office was also in vain. Also unheeded was a soldier’s appeal to give Fuchs an ultimatum and to wait until the next day. The crowds finally calmed down when Fuchs’s spokesman declared that on the following day the goods would be sold at a price set by the people themselves, and that, in addition, 5,000 metres of fabric would be given free of charge to the poorest people.’ (‘Price riots in Bohemia and Moravia’, Dělnický deník, 28 May 1919)
Despite announcing in the press on 27 February 1927 that it was declaring insolvency, the Adolf Fuchs company continued to operate, and in 1934 the store celebrated its 30-year anniversary. Nevertheless, it was apparently closed in 1936, and the following year some of the commercial premises were offered for rent.
Adolf Fuchs was a master of effective business practices, including the organization of various discount events or ‘white weeks’ – something akin to today’s clearance sales. He even opened a second shop at náměstí Svobody 8 (today the headquarters of the National Heritage Institute). Fuchs died on 9 May 1927 at the age of fifty; his wife Olga and son Karel (born 1908) were murdered during the Second World War. The family’s only surviving member was his daughter Martha Fuchs (born 1905, married name Deutsch, later Grauer), who emigrated to Brazil.
Despite the company’s financial difficulties in the second half of the 1930s, based on an advertisement from 1946 the store was apparently in operation after the war, albeit under national administration. Later modifications in the second half of the 20th century changed the appearance not only of the shopfronts on the ground floor and mezzanine, but also of the commercial first and second floors, leading to the disappearance of the decorative metal railing in front of the oriel windows and some of the decorative stuccowork, such as the ovals on the third-floor apron walls.
Pavla Cenková
