Pardubice Gallery will present Prior, the first department store in the region

Pardubice - Another exhibition dedicated to Pardubice architecture will from Monday present the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Prior department store from 1974. It was the first department store in Eastern Bohemia, and its red facade was initially disliked by local communist officials. This information was provided by Vanda Skálová, curator of the East Bohemian Gallery.

The building, designed by Brno architect Růžena Žertová, was completed in a record time. Three years passed from the start of construction to the grand opening. The red skeleton with blue retractable awnings, which shaded the shop windows on the ground floor, was meant to attract customers' attention.

The local communist cell disapproved of the color. For the grand opening, the central committee of the party sent the director of a large construction company, who was more favorable towards the design of the department store. "He stated that he had no objections to the red facade, and so the situation calmed down," Žertová said in one of her interviews.

The designer later received an honorary award from the city for the building and, even before its completion, won first place in an international architectural competition in Montevideo, Uruguay. The construction of Prior cost 60 million crowns, and the department store was projected to have an annual turnover of 280 million crowns. The idea of its construction was considered as early as the mid-60s. In 1992, Prior was purchased by the American company K-Mart, and in 1998, it became the property of the British firm Tesco, which still owns it today.

Further construction was soon to continue at Budovatelů Square, now Masaryk Square. However, residents waited more than a decade for it. The Hotel Labe was completed in 1985. The planned extension of Prior was never realized. Curator Skálová evaluates the large shopping center Afi, which was built next to Prior between 2007 and 2009, as a disruptive development. For example, Prior lost its unique entrance with a retractable glass portal.

"It essentially pushed the Prior building out of the context of the square, eliminated the entrance passage of the building, and degraded it to the position of an extension of an overall oversized and architecturally unremarkable shopping gallery," Skálová stated.