Register of modern architecture oA HÚ SAV

The Schön department store occupied two plots, on which originally stood two-storey buildings, which were built in 1918 according to the design of Alexander Feigler. The new building has already responded to the new regulation and the change of the street line following the extension of Obchodná Street. One underground and three above-ground floors were reserved for commercial businesses and administration offices. On the other floors there were two- and three-room apartments, on the top floor there was a spacious six-room apartment and a studio. The sales areas on the ground floor and first floor were visually interconnected by a rectangular opening of 6.8 x 5.3 m, and three 7 m long skylights made of glass blocks were to provide enough natural light. In an effort to enable the flexible functioning of the sales areas, the architects designed a reinforced concrete skeleton with a hitherto unprecedented span of 14 m. The service rooms were equipped with hot air heating and automatic cooling. The Schön department store represented a certain breakthrough in the context of the work of our architects. They replaced their characteristicly strict means of expression here with fashionable elements of "modern city palaces". For the first time, they used French windows, an all-glass parterre with round shop windows and an elegantly shaped gallery. Architect Weinwurm also had a special relationship with the building for personal reasons. In 1940, according to census data, he even lived here as a subtenant in the family of the gynecologist Heinrich Wiener and his wife Anna Wiener, later Stahl.
At the end of the past century, the commercial space was rebuilt twice, removing the gallery and the original surfaces. The facade of the building has remained almost unaltered.

author of the description: Henrieta Moravčíková

Bibliography:

Neuere Arbeiten der Architekten Weinwurm und Vécsei in Pressburg. Forum 5, 1935, s. / p. 105.
Fridrich Weinwurm – architekt Novej doby. (Katalóg výstavy. Ed. Š. Slachta.) Bratislava, SAS 1993, (nestr.) s. 57.
Dulla, Matúš – Moravčíková, Henrieta: Architektúra Slovenska v 20. storočí. Bratislava, Slovart 2002, 512 s., tu s. 92, 263, 380