At the junction of today’s Králová and Šeránková Streets stands a remarkable single-storey villa accentuated by a two-storey tower on one corner. A wrought-iron weathervane on top of the tower gives the year of the building’s construction – 1904. The villa is one of the best examples of an Art Nouveau family house in this part of town. The relatively small building’s dominant position in this newly developing Czech quarter on the northern slope of Kraví hora (Cow Hill) derives from its volumetrically distinctive character.
The villa’s first known owner (in 1905) was the builder or master mason Josef Kabelka, whose name is not found in any earlier or later Brno directories. It would seem that he built the house as an investment in the newly developed and potentially lucrative area of upper Žabovřesky, for by 1907 at the latest it was owned by Josef Zeman, a bank clerk and controller at the Cyril and Methodius Savings Bank who soon thereafter became politically active and served as councillor in 1913–1917. The villa remained in the Zeman family at least until 1948, when records show it was inhabited by the retired director Josef Zeman (either the bank controller himself or his son). In 1915, the city directory also lists the lawyer Jan Švec, who had been operating a brickyard on today’s Stránského Street since 1905. The villa originally stood on a showcase street lined with a wide range of houses built in the historicist Art Nouveau style, of which only the elementary school building across the street has survived.
Matěj Kruntorád