As a boy, I remember looking in awe at a block of flats in Malešice. At that time, there were already tall buildings in Prague, for example the tower blocks in the Zahradní Město housing estate, the famous Hotel International in Podbaba, the then Central Trade Union Council in Žižkov, the current Radost. But I still stared at the Malešice “skyscraper” from my height of 120 centimeters. Because it was apparently the tallest residential building in the city at the time. Residential from the point of view of an ordinary Prague resident. The high-rise building in Limuzská Street had (and still has) 22 floors above ground, i.e. the ground floor and 21 floors. So the thirteen-story tower blocks on Zahraďák were dwarfs compared to the skyscraper in Malešice.
When talking about skyscrapers, their 100th anniversary was celebrated in 1986 by a large professional conference in Chicago (where else, right) Second Century of Skyscraper. For non-English speakers, “The Second Century of the Skyscraper”. The participants then reminded them that the first building that could be described as “high-rise” was the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago. From today’s point of view, a laughable height, but let’s keep in mind that in those days in Prague, the highest residential and office buildings were up to the fourth floor, the Petřín observation tower did not yet tower over Prague at that time, the landmarks were the unfinished St. Vitus Cathedral, on the Old Town Square it was the high-rise Týn Church (and a few other Prague churches), the National Museum boasted an incredible 74 meters of height. But people mostly lived in houses with two or three floors.
A similar, but only regional, conference on tall buildings was previously held in Prague in 1971 and two years later in Bratislava. That is, in the times when the first meters of the later dominant buildings of some housing estates or the buildings of business organizations, especially those for foreign countries, were just climbing to the clouds. Centrotex already stood above the not-yet-existent Prague Uprising station, and in a few years, Motokov, then a slightly lower hotel, sprang up nearby. In the 1980s, Prague also became the world’s skyscraper metropolis, although it could never compare with New York or other American cities.
There are currently more than enough buildings for officials, businessmen, tourists and “mere residents” in Prague, but they are still increasing and will probably continue to increase. Although voices against them are raised here and there. But living above the tenth floor is no longer something extraordinary in the Czech capital, watching the sunset from a level to which a hundred years ago a person climbed only on the Petřín observation tower is no longer the privilege of the elite.
