Pod Hradbami 666/1

Original owners

Bankers Mr. Karel Prokop and Mr. Ferdinand Bouda bought the building plot, even with the rough construction started up to the basement level, from the builder Mr. Josef Karhan on August 17, 1928¹. According to the contract, the right of repurchase for the Capital of the City of Prague was tied to the land in the event, that the construction of a family house on the land was not completed within two years of the signing the contract².

Both bankers ordered the completion of the family house to the original owner of the plot, Mr.Karhan, and, on May 27, 1929, they obtained the permit³ „to live and use the house“ in Střešovice with descriptive number 666, in the street near the Buštěhradská railway crossing, later named Pod Hradbami.

After ten years, the house was sold to the bank director Mr. Karel Nowotný, with the then adress Na Příkopě 37 for 2, 5 times the original purchase price. The price was paid in cash⁴.

The construction of the villa was completed by the original owner and builder Mr. Josef Karhan according to the architectural design, developed by Ing. Vilém Beer⁵. Vilém Beer was born on April 12, 1900 in Pilsen and after studies he moved permanently to Prague, where he opened a studio in Nekázanka 8. At the end of the 1920, Vilém Beer moved to a better adress, when he set opened an office in the Fénix Palace on Wenceslas Square. In Prague architect Beer designed two family houses in the residential area of Ořechovka in Střešovice, and one of them is villa in Pod Hradbami Street no. 666.

Beer had not only Jewish origin, but, unfortunately, also tragic fate, in common with his clients. Most of builders were affected by Nazi anti-Jewish laws; first they were deprived of their dignity and later of life in concentration and extermination camps. Vilém Beer himself was transported to Terezín on March 9, 1943, and then to Auschwitz on October 28, 1944, where he joined more, than a million local Holocaust victims⁶.