House of Felix Neumann
- Classification
- Town house
- Country
- Czechia
- Region
- Moravská Ostrava a Přívoz
- Address
- Českobratrská 13, 702 00, Ostrava
- Period / style
- Secesní
Dům Felixe Neumanna stands on the corner of Českobratrská and Přívozská streets in Moravská Ostrava. The architect and builder Felix Neumann raised it in 1902 to his own design, as an apartment house in which he also lived and kept his office — at once a family home, an income property, and the calling card of the practice that did more than any other to shape Ostrava at the turn of the century. It is counted among the finest examples of vegetal Art Nouveau in the city, and has been called the peak form of the Ostrava secession. Neumann gave the building a facade of seven bays at street level, rising into asymmetrical upper floors, with a four-bay return along the side street. The ornament is francophone in inspiration and applied without restraint: ribbon motifs and flowers run in low relief across the stucco, interrupted by female mascarons and by wrought-iron balcony railings drawn in the same idiom. The corner carries a polygonal oriel capped with an onion dome, and beneath it a segmental pediment bearing the date 1902. The set piece is on the Českobratrská side — a large stucco figure of a dancing girl, framed in plant ornament, suspended above the street. Inside the front range the original staircase survives, with its decorated metal balustrade, Art Nouveau doors and stucco. Felix Neumann (1860–1942) was born at Radvanice and trained in Vienna — at the Technical University under Heinrich von Ferstel and Karl König, and in the office of the builder Wilhelm Stiassny — and afterwards in Berlin with H. Kayser and K. von Grossheim. He returned to Moravská Ostrava in 1889 and opened his own firm in May of the following year, the first architectural design office in the town. Between 1890 and 1914 he became the region's foremost building entrepreneur, designing apartment blocks and villas for Ostrava's political and industrial elite alongside hotels, cafés and public buildings, and taking commissions from the great industrial works themselves. The house has been a protected cultural monument since 9 March 1994 (ÚSKP 12184/8-3324) and stands within the Moravská Ostrava urban conservation area. Historical research into the building has been under way since 2021. A memorial plaque to Neumann is being designed for the facade, and a café and gallery bearing his name are planned; commercial space in the house is currently available to let.