The current appearance of the villa on Cupákova Street (originally Vrchlického nábřeží) – a building with a valuable Art Nouveau facade inspired by folk architecture, architect unknown – is the result of a renovation of an older villa. An 1886 map of Řečkovice already shows a house in this spot, which was acquired in the early 20th century (probably around 1906) by the builder Antonín Cupák (1877–1940). Cupák lived here with his wife Helena and two children, and it is highly likely that he designed its Art Nouveau renovation himself. Although we do not know much about Cupák’s work, his 1911–1912 collaboration with the architect Emil Straka on the nearby more luxurious villa of Vlasta Müllerová (Cupákova 17, B135) is documented. Given this connection, another possible hypothesis is that Straka is the author of Cupák’s villa.
Other buildings that have been stylistically compared to Cupák’s villa are the family house at Riegrova 4 by an unknown architect (primarily due to the similar shape of the gable with wooden beams and brackets) and Dušan Jurkovič’s apartment building for Benedikt Škarda at Dvořákova 10 (B033), which made use of similar ‘little square windows’ in the fanlights. Jurkovič, whose buildings are stylistically similar to Cupák’s villa, was also involved in the construction of the aforementioned villa for Vlasta Müllerová, apparently designing its decorative elements. The architect behind the renovation of Cupák’s villa in Řečkovice thus remains unclear, although the working connections between the builder Antonín Cupák and the architects Emil Straka and Dušan Jurkovič are certainly not entirely coincidental in this respect.
The single-storey villa sits on a square ground plan, with a rectangular veranda protruding into the garden. It has a distinctive facade with a contrasting combination of fair-faced bricks, smooth plaster and rough stucco. While the quoins on the corners of the villa and its central avant-corps are made of stucco, the simple rectangular window chambranles and horizontal bands in the brick facade are made of smooth plaster. The symmetrical street elevation is dominated by a central avant-corps crowned by a gable. The balcony on the gable’s attic floor is bounded by a sparingly decorated metal railing. The gable, covered by an overhanging sheet-metal roof, is held up by beams decorated with fine vegetal wood carvings and resting on a trio of corbels. It is decorated with a distinctive semi-circular window pediment adorned with a trio of voussoirs, and in the inner field also with a motif of the rising sun. Pediments also decorate the original ground-floor windows. The building’s original interior layout is not exactly known, but after 1928 – when the owner’s son Antonín Cupák Jr. (1903–1945) and his wife Ludmila also began to live in the villa – it was probably divided into two apartments, one on the ground floor and one in the attic. This layout is nevertheless only documented in plans made in 1964 and 1965 for the purpose of installing water and sewage systems.
The villa played a role in a tragic event of the Second World War. In the summer of 1942, Antonín Cupák Jr. and Karel Gromeš hid two paratroopers of the Silver B group, Jan Zemek and Vladimír Škach, in the garden shed in complete secrecy, not telling even their own families. They were betrayed, however, and in December 1942 Cupák, his wife and older daughter, and several others who had helped the paratroopers were arrested by the Gestapo for supporting the resistance. In 1945. Cupák and Gromeš were executed without trial at the Nazi concentration camp in Flossenbürg, Bavaria. Ludmila Cupáková and her daughters escaped the death penalty and eventually returned home. The street was renamed in Antonín Cupák’s honour in 1946, and in 2020 a plaque commemorating him and Karel Gromeš and their involvement in the resistance was ceremonially unveiled on the building’s facade. The villa is currently used for offices. The historic facade retains its original form and is thus a valuable example of Art Nouveau architecture based on folk tradition.
Šárka Bahounková