From the 1920s, grand homes and villas of the local social elite started to spring up along both sides of Kodymka Street, which separated Smetana Park from Masaryk Quarter and no longer exists today. One of the first villas to be built was that of Professor František Langmajer of Litomyšl Grammar School, who had the house built for his daughters Bedřiška and Vilemína between 1922 and 1923. The ornate two-storey villa with a turret and ground-floor bay window was designed by the builder Václav Šilhavý, the designer of the nearby evangelical church (02-42) and the Lidový Dům from the same period.
Similarly to the Lidový Dům, the exterior of Langmajer Villa is decorated with ornamental stucco motifs on sections between the window cornices of the ground floor and the first floor and with figural motifs on the curved bay window depicting an allegorical female figure, based on a well-known relief by Stanislav Sucharda, Poklad (Treasure), according to a motif from the poet Erben's work Kytice (Bouquet). The author of this decorative relief is most likely Sucharda's pupil, Ludvík Vocelka, who cooperated with Šilhavý on the Lidový Dům and who knew Sucharda's work extremely well. Moreover, in 1919, Vocelka opened a ceramics workshop in his private sculpture factory, where he reproduced artwork from the estate of Jan Štursa. Therefore, it is most likely that he also reproduced Sucharda's work, and the Litomyšl relief Poklad came about in this manner. However, the villa, with its ornamentation and fragmented mass, was subjected to criticism by Prague architect, Bohumil Hübschmann, for the building's, by that time, long overcome restlessness.
The interior layout of the house, comprising five rooms, a kitchen, hygiene facilities and utility area, was efficiently designed, without large stair halls (otherwise common in villas) or “uneconomical” spacious corridors.
The family used the house only briefly, as Professor Langmajer died one year after it was finished. The subsequent owners were the Šťastný brothers, after whom the access road is now named.
As was the case with all the buildings originally lining Kodymka Street, a four-lane road, built in the 1980s and cutting through a substantial part of the original plot, has spoilt the villa. The villa was used during the 1980s by the police, and today, is used by local authorities.
AŠ – LB