Baťa Turnov (1930)

In Turnov, the Baťa shoe department store is the most striking public building of the interwar period.The central part of the building is designed as a rounded corner with the entrance. The two upper floors were already originally equipped with casement windows, as seen on this website. To the left side of the house is added the staircase, which is a vertical component in contrast to the horizontally designed house. This composition was used in a similar way for the Baťa department store in Ústí nad Labem. Originally, the ground floor was more open to the street. The large window panes, behind which the round columns were visible, have now been replaced by more closed window fronts.The shoe shop was originally placed on the ground floor, the shoe repair shop on the first floor. Petra Ulbrych Pavienská mentions in her thesis that there was also a spare room, a bathroom and a washroom on the first floor. The word washroom (umývárna) suggests that it was used by the employees. But there is no explicit mention. The author touches on that there were three rooms and a kitchen on the second floor. It can be assumed that these areas were also public, but this cannot be stated unequivocally. 

Although information about this building are very limited, it can be assumed that this house was built in 1930 and opened in 1931.Since the Baťa company was expropriated first by the Nazis and then by the Communists, the shop lost its name in 1948. It is said, that above the entrance it was simply called Obuv, i.e. shoe shop, but the inhabitants of Turnov continued to go to Baťa.As is often the case in Czechia, the biggest changes came after 1990. After renovation, the house is now used as a café.

• Architektura a urbanismus v Turnově v letech 1900–1938.