The new school building on the corner of today’s Kounicova and Sušilova Streets was built according to plans drafted by an unknown architect (a city official) sometime around 1900, though no later than the autumn of 1903. Located opposite the Emperor Franz Joseph poorhouse (today Masaryk University’s Faculty of Science) on the undeveloped east side of Giskrova Street (today Kounicova), it was initially a detached building with an L-shaped ground plan. This area was still on Brno’s periphery at the time, past the abolished city cemetery, and it wasn’t until the 1920s that any significant building activity took place here. Nevertheless, although the school was a standalone structure until the construction of an addition in 1914, the design of the courtyard elevations and the building’s overall form clearly indicate that from, the beginning, it was expected to form part of a city block. It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that several apartment buildings with Rondocubist facades were constructed on the block, which was finally completed in 1930 with the school’s functionalist addition by architect Josef Polášek on Kotlářská Street.
Although the building is sometimes referred to as a Czech girls’ school or, conversely, as a Czech boys’ elementary school, in the plans it is labelled Doppel-Volksschule – a double ‘folk’ (i.e., elementary) school. From this we may assume that, from the beginning, the building was expected to house two schools, one for boys and one for girls. The Czech girls’ school was split off from Czech Girls’ Folk School at Hutterova 5 (today Traubova) in the 1900/1901 school year, although it was initially located in unsuitable apartment buildings in that neighbourhood. At the beginning of the 1903/1904 school year, it moved into the new building on today’s Kounicova Street as the Second Girls’ Folk School. The Czech boys’ school split off from a school on Winterholler Square (today, náměstí 28. října) in 1898 and was housed at Giskrova 34 (today Kounicova 10) until the new building was completed. It probably wasn’t until construction of the addition that the school was split into two sections by gender, with the girls in the older building and the boys in the new addition.
In terms of architectural form, the building can be classed alongside various Neo-Renaissance schools built in Brno in the second half of the 19th century. Unlike most of these buildings, however, it is composed without any emphasis on symmetry or monumentality. Instead, it works with the additive arrangement of window bays and modestly accentuated corners without calling attention to the main elevation. The building has a simple double-pile layout with street-facing classrooms and vaulted courtyard-facing corridors, plus two stairways in separate volumes protruding from the courtyard elevation. The gymnasium was located on the ground floor in the corner section, but its existence was not reflected in the building’s volume on its facade.
Except for the First World War, when the building housed the temporary barracks of Infantry Regiment no. 3, the building has been used as a school for its entire existence. Today, the entire building, including the 1930 wing, is home to the Kotlářská 4 Primary School and Preschool.
Karolína Králiková