One of the finest examples of purely Art Nouveau architecture in Žabovřesky stands on the original boundary between cadastral districts. The property was initially within the historical cadastral area of Křížová, which was incorporated into Brno in 1850. With the change of cadastral boundaries in the 1920s, all of Tábor Street (formerly Laudonova) and a part of Veveří Street were made a part of Žabovřesky. Today’s art and music school on the opposite corner was once a customs office conveniently located on the edge of town along the road to Veveří Castle via Žabovřesky, Komín and Bystrc. In the late 19th century, the area around Tábor began to see residential construction in the form of smaller family houses as well as urban apartment buildings. One such building was constructed in 1908 (as the year above the corner entrance informs us) by the builder and real estate entrepreneur Antonín Müller, who had previously (in 1903) built the part of today’s Hotel Slavia located on the corner of Solniční and Besední Streets according to plans by the then-beginning architect Antonín Blažek. In view of the stylistic similarity between the hotel and the building on the corner of Veveří and Tábor Streets, Blažek may well have designed this building as well, although his authorship has not yet been proven. Müller owned the building until his death in 1930 and rented it mainly to upper-middle-class families active in administration or education. Its stylistically pure Art Nouveau form is manifested in the rounded corner with an extra floor on top, where gilded wooden corbels hold up a roof overhang broken up by a pair of vases. The main cornice on the lateral facades is crowned by an undulating parapet decorated by stylized merlons with lowered draperies. The slightly protruding corner entryway originally led to what was presumably a shop or an inn, while the apartments were accessed from Tábor Street via an entrance crowned by a relief of seated eagles holding up a garland. A golden frog’s head peers out from the stucco drapery underneath some of the first-floor windows, and this symbol – which in the 1990s was added to the newly remodelled corner entrance – gave the house its name, U Zlaté žáby (The Golden Frog).
Matěj Kruntorád
