In 1913–1914, plans were made for an addition to the Czech elementary school – referred to as the Mädchen-Volks-und-Bürgerschule (Folk and Burgher School for Girls, i.e., an elementary and middle school) – at the northern end of Kounicova Street (until 1914 Giskrova). Although the original school, built around 1900 on the corner of today’s Kounicova and Sušilova Streets, is often referred to as a girls’ school, before the war the building housed both a girls’ and boys’ primary school. The language of instruction was Czech, and the planned addition was probably meant to resolve the problem of dividing the building into separate sections for boys and for girls. According to the plans, the addition was originally intended for a girls’ school, but by 1918 it housed the Burgher School for Boys (a middle school), later the Boys’ National School (an elementary school), and today it forms part of the Kotlářská 4 Primary School and Preschool.
The plans are signed by Franz Holik, who was Brno’s chief city architect in 1905–1914 and who also designed many other important school buildings. The school on Kounicova was probably one of his last projects in office before he was called up to the front during the First World War. Initially thought to have been killed in action, he was replaced as chief architect by Jindřich Kumpošt in 1920. As a result, when he did return he worked as a lower-ranking city architect. The school on Kounicova had a more modest design that lacked the Neo-Baroque monumentality and Art Nouveau decorativeness of earlier projects such as the Provincial Upper Secondary School on Kounicova 16 (today a nursing school, B116) or the Jubilee Folk and Burgher School for Boys (Křenová 21, B178) from 1910–1911. At the same time, it still contained typical elements of Holik’s school designs, such as a massive mansard roof or his use of differentiated heights between the building’s individual parts.
In terms of form, the addition did not follow on the older part of the school built around 1900, although both elevations were devoid of any significant historicist elements. The facades were covered in simple banded rustication, prominent arches accentuating the semi-circular windows on the ground floor and subtle pilaster strips on the upper floors. The only original element to have survived is the atypical design of the now unused main corner entrance, where a pair of thick Tuscan columns holds up a covered arcade. The building’s more restrained appearance may be the result of limited financial resources as well as a general deviation from Neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau tendencies reflecting the situation at the time of realization. Similarly, any more monumental design was precluded by the building’s location on a block-like corner plot and by the requirement that the architect take the existing building into account at least on a basic level. The interior common areas were painted with decorative elements that repeated the motif of the distinctive semi-circular entrances and blind arcades.
An interesting feature is the unusual placement of the gymnasium in a prominent position on the corner of the building, above which a large drawing studio was originally located. The other parts of the school had a conventional double-pile layout with classrooms facing the street. The original plan in 1914 had been to also construct a north-eastern wing on Kotlářská Street, but this part of the school was not built until 1930 according to plans drafted by the architect Josef Polášek in the spirit of the era’s functionalist principles.
Karolína Králiková
