This apartment building is one of four buildings on Pellicova Street (nos. 47, 49, 51, 53) that were built by the Brno developer František Valenta in 1912. The distinctly Romanticist eclectic architecture straddling the line between late historicism, geometric Art Nouveau and modernism is characterized by a rich articulation of volumes and decorated with remarkable figural and ornamental sculptures. The buildings’ construction was accompanied by a dispute between Valenta and Brno’s town council: in the spring of 1911, when he applied for permission to subdivide his land on Pellicova, the German members of the council and the owner of the Padowetz Hotel objected. The ethnic tensions of the era are excellently reflected by a report in the Czech press citing an alleged statement by the pertinent councillors: ‘There is no need to immediately approve the subdivision just because some “Herr Frantischek Valenta” requests it. From what we hear, one cannot build on Spielberggasse, for it is too steep.’ (Lidové noviny, 26 April 1911) Valenta’s application was indeed rejected, triggering an outraged response in Czech newspapers, but permission to subdivide the property and build on it was granted shortly afterwards. The new buildings became the property of František Valenta and his wife Marie, and they subsequently moved into Pellicova 47, which also housed the offices of Valenta’s construction company.
The three-storey corner building’s eclectic layers of architectural forms make a whimsical, almost bizarre impression. It has a distinctively articulated asymmetrical street elevation accentuated by a trio of adjoining oriels on a slightly projecting central avant-corps. Each oriel has a different shape and culminates in a different architectural element. The far-left, rounded oriel is topped by a Neo-Baroque gable decorated with small urn-shaped pinnacles. The second oriel is sharply angular, with a distinctive oval window reminiscent of the oculi of High Baroque buildings. It is crowned by a low turret. The final, rectangular oriel has a small single-pitch roof and balcony with squares of openwork decoration. All three oriels sit on stepped corbels. The windows on the main elevation, placed in an irregular pattern, are of various shapes and sizes. Four of the basement windows have an atypical trapezoidal shape. The main entrance on the far left is set inside a striking arched portal. The facade’s distinctive appearance is rounded out by figural and ornamental sculptural decoration, including a high relief of a young woman with an ostrich (a popular Art Nouveau motif) on the far right. The nude standing figure wears a period hairstyle; a cloak draped over her forearm flows to the ground in rich folds. Other sculptural facade elements include a putto relief with laurel wreaths and garlands above the window on the semi-circular oriel and a stylized vase with flowers and laurels on the ground-floor level below the figural relief
Pavla Cenková