There was the first sauna in Prague and a swimming pool, now the monument is abandoned. What will happen to the House of Body Culture?
The abandoned building of the former House of Body Culture can be found directly opposite the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic on the corner of the nábřeží Edvarda Beneše and U Bruských kasáren streets. It was built as part of the Klára Institute for the Blind, when its original Classicist building, which now houses the Czech Geodetic Service, ceased to be sufficient for the expanding teaching of the institute. The construction of the corner historic building with Art Nouveau elements began in November 1906 according to the design of architect Josef Piskač and was opened two and a half years later. And in the second half of the 20th century, it served the people of Prague precisely as the House of Body Culture, where people used to swim, exercise or go to the sauna.
“For the first time, I saw smaller exercise rooms here than the huge hall in Tyrš’s house,” recalls Helena Jarkovská, founder and promoter of Czech aerobics, who first practiced the then not so popular fitness gymnastics with music in 1968 at the House of Body Culture. ” I knew mainly the local gyms, but witnesses told me that they went to the pool, which was beautiful, “he adds.
Currently, the complex is owned by the state, and yet it has been dilapidated from the outside for a long time, Markéta Fialová from the Prague Monument Reserves Department of the National Monuments Institute in Prague says of its condition: It is in very good construction and technical condition. Probably suffering from moisture, it is possible that it flows into the structure, also falling off parts of the facade, so there were installed nets, but otherwise the object is nothing. “
On the facade of the house we know the morphology of historical styles and Art Nouveau. Above the entrance is a round window with relief figures of the blind. “And if we look a little higher, above the window we will see a bar in the arch with the inscription Prof. Dr. Alois Klár, which is the name of the original founder of Klára’s Institute for the Blind, “Michaela Tesařová from the Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters, which manages the building, shows me.
Together we enter through the former entrance for the public, we find ourselves under the main staircase and in the niches at the entrance we will see relief portraits of the directors of the institute. We go up the stairs to the most representative room of the house – the Art Nouveau hall, which originally housed the chapel. Directly below it are gyms and even below them in the basement of the pool, at the bottom of which we can still find the rest of the sediments reminiscent of the floods in 2002. We also walk through the upper floor, which houses offices above which were originally apartments and director
In 2019, the complex was taken over by the Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters. And what does he need with him? “We did an analysis and since it is located directly opposite the Straka Academy, it turned out that it makes sense to place some departments of the Office of the Government here. Of course, the building will need to be renovated more, which will cost an estimated higher hundreds of millions of crowns, “says office spokesman Radek Ležatka. According to him, it will be used not only by the Art Nouveau hall, but also by the gym, but the question of the future of the pool is still open.