Evangelical church, Functionalist Protestant church in Smíchov, Czech Republic
The Evangelical church, known as the House of J. A. Komenský, is a neoclassical building erected in 1930–1931 on Na Doubkové street in Smíchov. It was designed by Jaroslav Křížek from an idea by his father Filip Křížek, and at completion it was among the largest buildings of the Czech Brethren Evangelical Church. The worship hall holds a communion table and a pulpit of artificial red marble, with a pipe organ on the gallery.
The congregation, founded as a preaching station in 1909 and made a parish in 1924, decided in 1927 to build its own church. The foundation stone was laid on 5 October 1930 and the building, designed by Jaroslav Křížek from his father Filip's concept, opened on 28 September 1931. Filip Křížek died in May 1931, before completion.
The congregation belongs to the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, formed in 1918, and the building has been called the House of Jan Amos Komenský since it opened. Its lecture hall, Křížek Hall, is rented to a studio that makes short animated films and bedtime cartoons such as A je to! and Jája a Pája. A granite plaque by the entrance recalls the resistance group Předvoj, which operated here during the Second World War.
The entrance is on Na Doubkové street, where a memorial plaque recalls the wartime resistance group Předvoj. In front of the church stands Olbram Zoubek's 2010 statue of Milada Horáková, a member of the congregation, set on a granite slab with a golden rose in a noose. The lecture hall, Křížek Hall, is rented to an animation studio.
The congregation funded part of the construction with a material lottery drawn on 17 February 1928, which brought in a net 200,000 crowns. A black mourning flag flew over the unfinished building in May 1931 after Filip Křížek, who conceived the design, died before its completion.
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