In response to population growth and the expansion of the footwear industry, one of the first post-war department stores in Slovakia was built in the town of Partizánske. It became a kind of prototype for both the architecture and operation of department stores in the country. The building marks a shift away from the functionalist department stores of the interwar period towards a new architectural type with fewer windows, in which most retail spaces were artificially lit. The Mladosť department store opened in September 1964 as part of the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising. It was later renamed after being incorporated into the national enterprise Obchodné domy, which introduced the unified PRIOR name for all its department stores in 1968.
Spread over three retail floors, the store offered a wide range of goods: household items, toys, and stationery on the ground floor; clothing and textiles on the first floor; and footwear with fashion accessories on the second floor. The recessed top floor housed offices, a social room, and staff facilities. A grocery store became part of the department store only after a reconstruction (1974–1979). In terms of scale, the building relates closely to the surrounding architecture of the square, towards which it opens with a partially glazed ground floor and a large window on the first floor that provided the clothing department with some natural light. Next to the window, a relief sculpture titled Mladosť by Jaroslav Kočiš is installed. The solid sections of the ground-floor façade are clad in white Bulgarian marble, while the upper floors were originally finished with a white-grey plaster. The main entrance, facing the square and equipped with a thermal air curtain, leads to a staircase with artistically designed walls on the landings. Part of the now-lost landscaped area on the north-west side included a concrete relief that concealed the ventilation outlet. Structurally, the building is based on a reinforced-concrete frame with a 6 × 7.2 m grid, reusing the foundations of an earlier, unfinished department store from the 1950s.
author of the description: Karolína Králiková
Bibliography:
LÝSEK, Lumír: Obchodný dom Mladosť v Partizánskom. Projekt 1965, roč. 7, č. 1, s. 12–15.
Prior, obchodný dom Partizánske, Technicko-ekonomické vyhodnotenie, brožúra.
