Water Reservoir at Florenc

Another photograph of an air raid water reservoir comes from the area of Florenc in front of the building of the Prague City Museum (no.1554/52). The photograph is mainly interesting for the buildings in the background. In addition to the dominant Neo-Renaissance building of the museum designed by Antonín Balšánek from 1896–1898 (on the left), which still serves as a museum today, the image also shows an adjacent building that no longer exists. This smaller building used to be a café pavilion built in the newly established city park, behind the abolished city gate at Na Poříčí. The pavilion was erected in 1875–1876 from a design by Arnošt Jenšovský and Maxmilián Wolf. The Municipal Museum was opened at the suggestion of Vojta Náprstka in this small pavilion in 1883. As early as 1891 it was decided that a new building was needed for the fast growing collection of the museum. Interestingly, the building of the new museum used some elements from the buildings pulled down during the urban renewal taking place at the time.JH [Jiří Hilmera], čp. 1554/II, in: Růžena Baťková a kol., Umělecké památky Prahy. Nové Město, Vyšehrad, Vinohrady, Academia, Praha, 1998, pp. 650–652.

During the struggles of the May Uprising the new museum was damaged – mainly the tympanum with a sculpture of Prague by Ladislav Šaloun.Oldřich Mahler, Po stopách květnového povstání v Praze, in: Staletá Praha XIX, Praha bojující, 1989, p. 26. The sculpture, destroyed on 8 May, was only replaced in 1985 with a copy by the sculptors Miloslav Šonka and Zdeněk Preclík.http://www.revuekamen.cz/saloun.htm (accessed 19 June 2017). The original building of the museum, the smaller café pavilion, was torn down in 1974 and the site made way for the building of the north-south highway.Pavla Státníková, „Muzeum hlavního města Prahy slaví 120. výročí otevření první expozice pro veřejnost“, in: Věstník Klubu za Starou Prahu, 3/2003, cited after: http://stary-web.zastarouprahu.cz/ruzne/muzeum-120.htm (accessed 14 June 2017).