New City Hall, City hall in Moravská Ostrava, Czech Republic.
The New City Hall is a modern administrative building in Moravská Ostrava distinguished by its 85.6-meter tower with a copper-clad steel structure. The structure consists of three wings surrounding a central rectangular courtyard.
Construction ran from 1925 to 1930, after a 1923 competition won by František Kolář and Jan Rubý with Vladimír Fischer; Karel Kotas led the works. Unstable subsoil forced a steel tower clad in copper instead of the planned stone one. The building opened on 28 October 1930, costing 52 million crowns.
The four 3.2-metre bronze figures on the facade, made by Václav Mach, stand for mining, trade, science and metallurgy, the four functions of Ostrava. The foyer serves as an exhibition gallery, and a bust of T. G. Masaryk by Josef Mařatka was moved to Masaryk Square during its renovation.
The tower holds an information centre and a terrace at 73 m reached by a lift; the express lift installed here was, at 51 m, the highest in the republic when built. A paternoster still runs in the right wing, one of the last in Ostrava. A passage through the main wing leads to the riverbank and a partly open-air restaurant.
The paternoster in the south wing is one of the last still running in Ostrava; another operates in the OKD building opposite. The tower's express lift, 51 m high, was the tallest of its kind in the country when installed, and the clock dials measure 350 cm across.
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