Employee Colonies 1900-1938 – Social Housing in Northern Bohemia

24.2.2016 - 29.5.2016

The authors of this exhibition are employees of the Ústí nad Labem branch of the National Heritage Institute Mgr. Marta Pavlíková, Mgr. Jiří Bureš, and Mgr. Alena Sellnerová. The exhibition itself is one of the outputs of an extensive research project "Survey and Presentation of 19th and 20th Century Architecture," funded by institutional support from the Ministry of Culture for the long-term conceptual development of the research organization.

Nearly thirty panels capture the development of employee housing from the mid-19th century. The greatest attention is paid to interwar construction and efforts to address the housing crisis. It was in the heavily industrialized area of the Most Coal Basin and its immediate surroundings that high-quality examples of employee housing architecture emerged in the first third of the 20th century. Whether it is the colony of houses for railway employees in Louny designed by Jan Kotěra, or the housing estate of the Weinmann factories in Světec designed by Rudolf Otto Salvisberg. As part of a state initiative to alleviate the housing crisis, state mining colonies were built through the Ministry of Public Works - for example, in Duchcov, Ervěnice, Komořany, or Horní Litvínov. Architects Jindřich Freiwald, Emil Králíček, and František Albert Libra contributed to their creation, with Libra's functionalist mining houses culminating the development of employee housing during the observed period.

The exhibition is complemented by a collection of spatial models of residential colonies in Louny, Kopisty, and Louka near Litvínov. Everyday items from mining households and examples of house rules are also presented.

Alongside the exhibition, a publication titled "Employee Housing Estates in Northern Bohemia between 1900-1938" has been created, which we offer for sale at the museum reception.