Professor Zdeněk Elger of Elgenfeld was a professor at the Czech Technical University in Brno, where he held the post of rector in 1905–1906. His spacious family home near the beginning of Pellicova Street is a cultivated Art Nouveau building situated in an impressive setting below Špilberk Castle. The house was built in 1905–1906, as indicated by the date on the facade.
The villa was designed in 1905 by Elger’s university colleague, the architect Karel Hugo Kepka. A period photograph shows its original appearance upon completion: it was a two-storey building with living spaces in the attic and a triple-bay main elevation with a shallow avant-corps. The posthumous estate of Kepka’s pupil and assistant, the Brno architect Karel Láník, contains drawings of the building’s main and side elevations that may have served as the starting point for architect Václav Nekvasil’s never-realized 1926 plans for an enlargement. The building was eventually extended outwards and upwards in 1929, most probably according to plans by the architect Vladimír Fischer (1870–1947). This project, which was carried out by the builder Stanislav Neděla, added a second building of roughly equal size and also with three window bays (today Pellicova 8b). Both structures were subsequently raised to the same height to create the present four-storey semi-detached structure with a rectangular ground plan and six window bays.
The villa’s design is an eclectic mix of late historicism, Art Nouveau and modernism. A dominant feature on its impressively composed street facade is the avant-corps, on which the main entrance is accentuated by a magnificent portal flanked by a pair of large decorative vases with bouquets of roses on top of pylon-shaped corbels. The rose motif is repeated in the form of relief wreaths on the upper part of the pilasters that demarcate the avant-corps. Elements of geometric Art Nouveau predominate in the facades’ stucco decoration. The basecourse was made of quarry stone, which was typical for the period. Kepka used the same stone for Elger’s villa as he did for the Church of the Sacred Heart in Brno-Husovice.
A dominant feature on the building’s eastern elevation is the rounded avant-corps crowned by a balcony. Above the basecourse, ornamentally decorated half-pillars divide the avant-corps into several recessed rectangular fields with glass brick infill. The balcony has a wrought-iron railing with Art Nouveau décor and is covered by a semi-circular roof on a fanlike metal structure. The street fencing is original.
In the villa’s original layout, the entrance hall on the ground floor had a staircase, service staircase and toilet. From the hall, two doorways led to two large street-facing rooms, of which the eastern one was enlarged by the interesting semi-circular space of the avant-corps. Another, smaller ground-floor room and kitchen were located at the rear of the building facing the garden, and next to these were the maid’s quarters and laundry room. The layout on the first floor was similar: four symmetrically arranged bedrooms and a bathroom with a toilet and bathtub. The largest of the bedrooms opened onto the semi-circular balcony. The basement had cellar storage and a separate one-room apartment with its own entrance. A number of valuable interior elements, which repeated the rose motif, have been preserved. Following a heritage-sensitive renovation, the villa continues to be used for housing.
Pavla Cenková
