This building with a highly sculptured facade on the corner of Špitálka and Stavební Streets is one of Brno’s most distinctive works of Art Nouveau architecture. It is one of just a few valuable residential buildings amidst the industrial complexes of this former factory district, where it is a dominant feature of the surrounding urban landscape. The house is closely associated with its builder and probably also architect, the building developer Augustin (Augustus) Butscha (1855‒1925). Butscha hailed from Náměšť nad Oslavou, studied at the Spezialschule für Architektur at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna and lived first in Vienna before working in Sarajevo, then a part of Austria-Hungary. After 1894, he was active in construction in Brno, where he among other things helped to build the city’s vast slaughterhouse complex according to plans by Otokar Burghart and Ferdinand Abt (1897–1899). Later in life (1915–1925), he worked for the architecture department of the Brno Building Authority. Butscha initially owned the rental building on Špitálka/Stavební on his own, but in 1907 a share in the building was acquired by Hubert Sýkora. Butscha’s share passed to his sister Wilhelmina upon his death on 12 January 1925, and after 1930 the building was owned exclusively by Marie Sýkorová.
The four-storey corner building consists of two wings set at an obtuse angle. The street-facing elevations are nearly symmetrical, with a regular grid of rectangular windows – seven bays on Stavební Street and eight on Špitálka. The building’s radical Art Nouveau style is reflected in particular in the expressive form of its articulated attic, monumental verticality and rich decorative facades with a predominantly geometric décor.
The facades are vertically segmented by a giant order of pilasters spanning three floors, and horizontally by banded rustication on the ground floor and a profiled cordon ledge separating the ground floor from the upper floors. Visually dominant avant-corps on both elevations’ lateral bays are topped with attic structures resembling turrets with battlements. Between the avant-corps, a massive crown cornice rests on a series of corbels. The corner itself is accentuated by a half-column inserted between the two corner avant-corps, equipped with a tall rusticated base and a massive Tuscan capital. The rich decorative stucco relief is mainly concentrated on the apron walls and the shafts and capitals of the pilasters, thereby emphasizing the facade’s monumental verticality. The apron walls are decorated with geometric Art Nouveau motifs; the circular motif of a winged solar sphere on the third floor is repeated in the boat-shaped pediment above the first-floor windows on the avant-corps. The pilasters are finished with capitals in the form of triglyphs, with relief wreaths and interwoven ribbons underneath. The pilasters on the avant-corps are topped with fluted volutes surrounded by rich vegetal décor and long ribbons that pass through ring-shaped reliefs as they fall vertically into a final lower braid. The original windows and entrance door have been preserved, as have the door and windows of corner shop on the ground floor.
Pavla Cenková