First Czech skyscraper celebrates its ninetieth anniversary

Prague - 90 years ago, on March 5, 1934, the building of the General Pension Institute was opened in Prague's Žižkov, which later housed the House of Trade Unions and is now called the House of Joy. This monumental functionalist palace, which dominates the lower part of Žižkov, is sometimes referred to as the first Czech skyscraper due to its height of 52 meters.

The palace was created according to the winning project by Josef Havlíček and Karel Honzík. The architects, who were not yet 30 years old at the time, designed a reinforced concrete building with a cross-shaped floor plan for the General Pension Institute. The façade, clad in ceramic tiles, resembles many other Prague buildings from that era, such as the Ministry of Interior in Letná or the Electric Works building in Holešovice.

The General Pension Institute, which provided disability and old-age insurance for private employees, originally resided on what is now Rašínovo nábřeží in a building constructed just before the beginning of World War I, according to the design by Jan Kotěra and Josef Zasche. However, by the end of the 1920s, due to the growing number of clients, it needed a new seat. The project by Havlíček and Honzík, who at that time had not built anything similarly large, managed to gain approval not only despite the reserved stance of part of the professional public but also because it did not comply with the urban requirements for a block floor plan.

The construction of the functionalist building, which arose on the site where there were once two vineyard estates and later the Prague municipal gasworks, lasted two years. Between spring and autumn 1932, the reinforced concrete structure was first erected, during the following winter brick partitions were added, so that by the spring of 1933 workers could begin installing the necessary technologies and tiled façade. In early February 1934, the officials began to move in, and on March 5 of the same year, the institute commenced operations in its new headquarters.

"The building was equipped with the most modern technology including air conditioning from the American company Carrier. On the flat roofs were viewing sun terraces, and a modern conference hall became part of the building," wrote architectural historian Zdeněk Lukeš about the palace. Thanks to the cross-shaped floor plan, Havlíček and Honzík allowed for direct lighting of the offices, with high wings housing six to seven hundred officials complemented by lower sections with employee apartments and ground-floor commercial spaces facing today's Seifertova Street.

In 1948, the building, along with the functioning of the General Pension Institute, was taken over by the Central National Insurance Company, and four years later, health insurance was transferred to the administration of the unions, to which the building also fell. The Žižkov palace then became the seat of the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) and remained with the trade unionists even after November 1989, when it received a new name - the House of Trade Unions.

In 2018, the unions sold the building, which they themselves were using about one-fifth of and renting out the rest, for more than one billion crowns. It is now called the House of Joy and contains, for example, a restaurant, a cinema, and a number of other tenants, including private companies. In the coming years, a major reconstruction awaits the building.