In the early 20th century, future visions for Husovice expected it to become a modern city, and today’s Lieberzeitova Street (initially named Mánesova when it was laid out in 1910) would be one of its ‘showcase streets’. One particularly valuable set of houses from this era is the ensemble consisting of the distinctive corner building at Lieberzeitova 2 – Nováčkova 29 and the adjacent buildings at Lieberzeitova 4‒10. The facades, done in an austere geometric Art Nouveau style, were visually unified by the repeated use of gold-coloured glass cubes. Number 8, which combined Art Nouveau and historicist motifs, is of a somewhat different character. The best-preserved building on the block is at Lieberzeitova 6, where a sensitive renovation project has helped to preserve several original architectural elements, including the windows. It was probably designed by the same person as the nearly identical neighbouring house at Lieberzeitova 4, whose original appearance has unfortunately been lost to later alterations.
The two-storey building’s seven-bay, horizontally composed facade is broken up by an avant-corps that is further divided into three fields by a set of tall pilaster strips. The grid of symmetrically placed rectangular windows with square fanlights (a typical Art Nouveau element) or with fanlights featuring a diamond motif is disrupted by the simple rectangular entryway on the second window axis from the right. The cornice protrudes heavily from the facade beneath the low-slung gable roof. The date of construction is indicated beneath the cornice: ‘ANNO – 1908’.
The building’s understated ornamentation, done in a pure geometric Art Nouveau style, is founded on the alteration of roughly textured plaster with soft and smooth plaster surfaces, plus the use of protruding as well as recessed rectangular fields of various dimensions. Other geometric Art Nouveau elements are the pyramidally-arranged golden glass squares above the windows on the ground floor and the rectangular frames made of small bluish-green pieces of glass above the windows on the upper floor. A similar pyramidal arrangement of small glass tiles above the windows can be found on other typical examples of geometric Art Nouveau in Brno, for instance Hubert Gessner’s District Sickness Fund from the year 1903 (Milady Horákové 34/36, B158). The grid-like facade is softened by the use of geometric vegetal elements such as the distinct bluish-green garlands in the areas between the windows on the central avant-corps or the stylized wreaths beneath the roof cornice. The light colour of the variously textured plaster contrasts with the bright colour accents produced by the glass tiles, which resemble the glimmering play of light produced by precious gems. All of these elements together produce a sober yet sophisticated ‘non-ornamental ornamentation’ that reflects the ideals of geometric Art Nouveau as described by Joseph Maria Olbrich. A rare surviving example of a strictly geometric Art Nouveau facade, this building is a perfect example of the application of this ideal within the local context of Husovice.
Pavla Cenková