Intro

This is my very first blog post! As I write this, the website is not yet launched. All the decisions that go into constructing a website take time, and the learning curve is steep, but I hope to publish soon. In the meantime, I have a lot of help and am building the site with all the necessary materials—form, content, functionality, and purpose!

Křenová 14, Alfred and Rosa’s 1937 apartment building. Photo by Anne Newman.

Funny thing is, the star of this website, my lodestar, is a building—a modernist apartment house in Brno, Czech Republic that my grandparents commissioned in 1937, shortly before World War II. They lost it twice—to the Nazis and then the Communists. My husband and I own it now, thanks to my father who reclaimed his parents’ properties in the 1990s, after the Czechs kicked out the Communist regime and restored democracy to Czechoslovakia.

The building’s survival all these years has special meaning for me. It represents continuity for our family—a concept that could not be taken for granted in Central Europe in the mid-twentieth century. It is also part of a larger world of 1920s and 30s modernist architecture that is still well-represented and valued in Brno today.

For the last eight years I have been researching and writing about the building, my grandparents, and their architect. This research has led me to many places in the world, taught me a lot, and gifted me with new acquaintances and friends. I hope to share on this website some of the stories from these travels.