The villa district along the new road (today’s Veslařská Street) leading from Žabovřesky to Pisárky on the right (western) bank of the Svratka River near Kamenný Mlýn, began to develop after 1860 with elongated plots laid out on the slope known as Na Jurance. According to the land registry, from September 1872 the building at Veslařská 234 was owned by the Brno historian and mayor Christian d’Elvert (1806–1896). At the time, it was marked no. 77 on parcel no. 1202 (with the label ‘summer palace’). The building itself is nevertheless already present on the ‘stable cadastre map’ from 1870. In April 1874, d’Elvert acquired another five neighbouring plots, but in November 1895 he gave his properties to his brother Friedrich d’Elvert (1812–1901), after whose death it was inherited by his three children. In October 1901, they sold the summer palace (villa) and the related properties to Margarethe Rohrer (Margarethe Marie Augusta, née Krackhardt, 1870–1926), the wife of Rudolf Rohrer Jr. (1864–1913), a member of a family of well-known Brno publishers and printers. After her death in July 1926, ownership of the house passed to her son Friedrich Karl Ernst Rohrer (1895–1945), who in February 1944 gave it to his wife Margarethe Rohrer, née von Stöger-Steiner (1893–1969), daughter of the last Austro-Hungarian Minister of War. After the Second World War, the Rohrers saw all their property confiscated by presidential decree. In August 1946, the villa was placed under national administration, and in June 1957 it became the property of the Czechoslovak state. In December 1962, administration of the building was transferred to a boarding school for children with speech impediments that had been housed there since 1950 (today the Elementary School and Preschool for Speech Therapy).
The villa was in all likelihood built for Christian d’Elvert, who is listed as the owner in the 1872 land registry. The aforementioned cadastral map from 1870 nevertheless shows the building in its original footprint. The two-storey Palladian villa was designed by an unknown architect probably in the late 1860s. The square parlour on the raised ground floor of the symmetrically composed building opens onto a spacious veranda with a balustrade and four columns with Ionic capitals, originally topped by a triangular tympanum. This description is based on the anonymous undated design (main elevation and two floor plans) and an undated watercolour drawing signed ‘Petr Jaroš’.
Apparently in 1909–1910, the villa was expanded both horizontally and vertically, probably by Rudolf Rohrer Jr. The plans were drafted by Leopold Bauer, who added a storey with a partially habitable attic. Bauer managed to preserve the rhythm of the Neo-Renaissance facade, except for the use of wider windows on the added floor, which housed the family’s bedrooms. On the south side, Bauer designed a cylindrical addition with a salon (ballroom?) on whose apron walls he repeated the balustrade motif from the veranda. On the building’s northern elevation, he added a covered arcade with barrel-vaulted arches. The villa’s original layout remained almost unchanged. The central space with veranda was turned into a dining room, while the other rooms were used as a salon and a study. The most striking new feature inside the building is the winding staircase with decorative cast-iron railings. The vestibule, whose walls are lined with glossy light-grey marble, is very elegantly designed. Leopold Bauer also designed the interior furnishings, and some of the built-in wardrobes and wood panelling have been preserved to this day. Bauer undoubtedly was also responsible for the decorative wall along Veslařská Street.
At some point, apparently in the 1920s, tennis courts and a swimming pool were built on the hillside behind the villa. By this time, the villa was already occupied by Friedrich Karl Ernst Rohrer, who represented Czechoslovakia at the Davis Cup and participated in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. His wife Margarethe was a member of the BLTC tennis club in Brno (at the Lužánky courts) and was also active as a writer and translator. After 1935 she ran the Rohrer publishing house in Brno and in Baden, Austria (where she continued to run the company after her post-war expulsion). The Rohrers were apparently close friends with Leopold Bauer: in 1932, the company published a book commemorating the architect’s sixtieth birthday. Friedrich Rohrer himself contributed to the book, praising Leopold Bauer not only as an architect but also as an understanding advisor during remodelling projects and expressing his admiration for and heartfelt gratitude towards him. His text is accompanied by a photograph of the villa dated 1910 on which one can see the cylindrical avant-corps usually dated to 1914 (?).
In 2004–2007, a new school building was constructed next to the villa, to which it is connected by a glass corridor (design: Arch.Design s. r. o., Jaroslav Dokoupil and Jana Háyeková).
Dagmar Černoušková
