Ignác Šechtl and Josef Jindřich Šechtl: September: House No. 1287, 9th May Street

Ignác Šechtl and Josef Jindřich Šechtl

This house stands today on 9th May Street (date of the Red Army’s entry into Czechoslovakia in 1945). People just call the street “třída” (the avenue), only this word in Czech also means “class” in the social sense, a word fateful for the house given all the political changes that it saw down the years. It was built in 1923 by architects Klíma and Lang for tradesman Šafránek. In the 1950s it was nationalized, confiscated from its bourgeois ownership by the proletariat. It was only returned to the Šafránek family in the 1990s during the post-Communist restitution.