The architectural distinctiveness of the villa on the corner of Lipová and Květná Streets – built in 1909–1910 for the prominent surgeon and founder of the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno, Dr. Jaroslav Bakeš – is apparent at first glance. Bakeš was born on 16 August 1871 in Blansko into a wealthy and educated family. His grandfather was Jindřich Wankel, his father František Xaver Bakeš was a prominent teacher, and his mother Lucie, who had the highest education a woman could achieve at the time, was an ethnographer. After studying medicine in Vienna, Bakeš first worked at Vienna General Hospital (1897–1902). He then served as head physician of the hospital in Třebíč (1902–1909) before taking on, in 1909, the same position at the newly built surgical pavilion at the Moravian Provincial Hospital in Brno. In 1922, he took over as head of the modern surgical institute at Žlutý kopec (Yellow Hill). In 1928, members of the Bakeš family founded the House of Comfort, whose activities centred around the treatment of cancer patients. The association later initiated the building of the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute. When Jaroslav Bakeš left Třebíč for Brno, he commissioned the construction of a grand villa on Květná Street. To this end, on 2 July 1909 he purchased a plot of land in this emerging villa district from the industrialist Viktor von Bauer. He received a building permit for the construction of a two-storey villa in May of the same year. The building is mentioned in a letter to his mother from early October 1909: ‘I would very much have liked to have already shown Father the villa, but he expressly told me that he did not want to go before everything was finished. I am therefore honouring his wish. I think he wants to be “surprised”. You could ask him whether he wouldn’t perhaps like to have a look now.’ The building’s architect is unknown, though it was probably designed by an architect from Vienna. The actual construction work, completed in 1909, was probably done by the builder Oskar Strnad. Within the local context, the Bakeš Villa is a singular example of villa architecture. Its architectural forms draw on the tradition of English country architecture, the so-called cottage style, with additional Art Nouveau elements. The British influence is clearly present in the simple and concise character of the building’s volume and the distinctive silhouette of the street-facing natural stone facade. Fair-faced stone is used on the main and side elevations, and partly also on the courtyard-facing elevation (on the basement level and corners). The detached two-storey building has an irregular ground plan with an asymmetrical main elevation facing Lipová Street. A rectangular entryway on the second window bay from the left is covered by an understated semi-circular awning that contrasts with the villa’s monumental facade. An avant-corps towards the right of the main elevation is topped by a tall triangular gable broken up by small rectangular windows. The set of four windows on the avant-corps are rectangular on ground floor and covered by a continuous arch on the first floor. Inside, the layout has been modelled in the English manner: a central hall with an open staircase. Jaroslav Bakeš’s pastimes included horse riding, driving his automobile, collecting and sorting minerals and above all hunting, for which he undertook long journeys, among other places to northern Canada, a trip he described in a letter to his mother: ‘Dear Mother! I returned from the wilderness yesterday in good health and with beautiful trophies for the museum and for myself: 3 grizzlies, two giant Canadian elk, of which one set of antlers weighs more than 20 kg, 3 caribou, 3 haplocerus (white chamois – actually a mountain antelope), including a whole one for the museum. I have experienced much, both good and bad, beautiful and bad moments – as is the way with everything in the world.’ (J. Bakeš to his mother Lucie Bakešová, early October 1927, Telegraph Creek, Cassiar, Canada.) Many of Bakeš’s hunting trophies and his extensive mineralogical collections were on display in the villa’s lavish Art Nouveau interiors. Visitors could encounter rare hunting trophies in the English hall – the building’s main living space with oak veneer walls, a wooden coffered ceiling, staircase and gallery. The interiors were still intact in the 1970s. Besides Jaroslav Bakeš and his wife, at some point the villa was apparently also home to his parents, his illegitimate daughter Anna, and Věra, a ward whom his mother Lucie Bakešová adopted in 1930. As part of the building’s remodelling and expansion in the 1930s, the ceiling in the main living hall was lowered. After the death of Jaroslav Bakeš in 1930 and of his mother Lucie Bakešová in 1935, his daughter Anna lived in the villa with her husband Ludvík Lesný and their daughter Věra. Later, the villa also housed tenants, some of whom took the two women to court in 1978, as a result of which both women had to leave the villa and move to a small house in Blansko, where they remained for the rest of their lives. Despite later alterations to the interior, the exterior of the house, including the original fencing and garden, has been well preserved.
Pavla Cenková