In 1904–1906, the vast area between Lidická, Smetanova and Cihlářská Streets saw extensive redevelopment, with a new block of multi-storey apartment buildings erected on the site of older residential housing. It was the first major project realized by the important Brno builder Friedrich Wilhelm Schmeer, who spent most of his career working closely with the architect Vladimír Fischer. Schmeer’s building company created the technical plans and layouts for the houses, while the facade designs were mainly Fischer’s work, and the final shape of the buildings was the result of cooperation between the two.
In 1905, Schmeer significantly remodelled the apartment building at Lidická 45 on the western street front opposite Lužánky Park. He owned the building from 1905 to 1911, and during this time the offices of his construction company were housed in it as well. The facade is even decorated with symbols of the builders’ guild and a bust of Brno’s most famous Late Gothic builder, Anton Pilgram. In 1911, the building was acquired by Anna Popper, who sold it to Maria, Rudolf and Oskar Charvát in 1924.
The eclectic architecture of the elaborately composed facade loosely works with various historicist forms, combining them into an original, distinctly romantic whole. The rich figural and ornamental decoration draws its motifs mainly from the Late Gothic and Renaissance eras. The monumental verticality of the four-storey building’s triple-bay facade is further emphasized by the central three-sided oriel and the vertical lines of quoins on the second and third floors. The ‘heavy’ ground floor area is covered in banded rustication, and the facade is topped by a Baroque gable whose surface is covered by fine stucco décor with motifs of flowers and vases in the Louis XVI style, which are also repeated in the niches between the windows of the top floor. The large rectangular windows are framed by variously shaped chambranles (a different shape on each floor) that reference Renaissance and Late Gothic motifs of intersecting rods and drapery arches. The dominant oriel with Late Gothic waterspouts sits atop a massive Gothic corbel decorated with the half-figure of a Gothic builder, perhaps Master Anton Pilgram. The corbel sits between four square fields with relief images of construction-related symbols. The centrally located entrance is framed by an eclectic portal, above which is a fanlight flanked by figures of knights in armour – a historicist reference to the figures from Pilgram’s portal on Brno’s Old Town Hall. We may consider the possibility that Schmeer was consciously referencing the legacy of this famous builder from the Late Middle Ages. One thing that is without a doubt, however, is that despite the demanding task of combining a large number of references to the past, the result is a surprisingly coherent and visually impressive work of architecture. The appearance of the otherwise well-preserved building has been somewhat degraded by insensitive alterations to the commercial premises on the ground floor.
Pavla Cenková
