Next to his earlier trio of apartment buildings erected in 1903–1904 at Úvoz 52–56, in 1907 the architect and builder Gottlob Alber constructed two more for his wife Rosalie at nos. 48–50. One tenant at Úvoz 50 was Robert Frieb, a teacher at the local secondary school, but the identities of the buildings’ other residents in the early 20th century remain unknown. Rosalie Alber apparently retained ownership of no. 48 until she died, while the neighbouring building changed hands frequently from 1918 until it was bought by Alois and Františka Doležal, who kept it for a longer period. In 1948, the buildings were inhabited by a wide range of tenants from the middle and lower middle class, including workers, craftsmen and clerks. One resident of no. 48 was Arnošt Píša, the founder of Brno’s second Czech-language bookshop (1898) and its first antiquarian bookshop, who lived here until his death in 1950. Píša was also involved in publishing, and some of his more luxurious bindings were designed by Dušan Jurkovič. Both buildings are still used for residential purposes.
Friedrich Gottlob Karl Alber was a German-born builder who had worked in Brno since the 1880s, and who ran a prosperous local construction company in cooperation with Heinrich Schmid. For his wife’s properties on Úvoz, he designed a typical double house (two mirror-image buildings that combine to form one single mass. The central part of this double building is accentuated by a rectangular avant-corps with two entrances standing side-by-side. The main rooms on each floor are located in this avant-corps, from where they open onto the street through large windows. The facades’ understated geometric decoration, however, tempts us to question Alber’s authorship, for their simplicity contrasts sharply with the elaborate Neo-Baroque facades on the neighbouring buildings. Another interesting facade element is the mouldings decorated with flower garlands above the second-floor windows. The double house is essentially a corner building, as the sloping terrain of Špilberk Hill did not allow for any construction further down the street. As a consequence, the side elevation was given a modestly structured facade as well. The two buildings’ unity is today somewhat disturbed by their differently coloured facades, resulting in a partial loss of the original architectural effect.
Matěj Kruntorád
