Towards the end of the 1930s, the small village of Cerekvice nad Loučnou acquired an impressive, modern local school building whose cosmopolitan architectural concept in the spirit of “White Functionalism” – a style rarely seen in the Litomyšl area – justifiably attracted the attention of the lay and professional public alike.
Prolonged negotiations preceded its construction, as several villages, such as Hrušová and Bučina, were vying for it to be built within their jurisdiction. At first, a building plot at the crossroad to Újezdec and Nová Sídla was approved; later, the Prague architect Ladislav Skřivánek suggested land near the road to Pekla for which he designed a conservative school building in 1924 with its entrance in line with its axis and featuring distinctive bossage. In 1936, the originally suggested building plot was finally chosen. However, none of the five design sketches offered was deemed suitable by the jury. Therefore, the Choceň architect Čeněk Mužík was given the task of creating a new design by the jury which simultaneously sought a definitive building plot near the sugar refinery on the outskirts of the village.
Thanks to its irregular, intricately partitioned, approximately T-shaped floor plan and its “cascade-shaped” silhouette, the building designed by Mužík was, in spite of its vastness, of petite appearance. The only distinguishing features of the smooth Functionalist facade, devoid of any relief work, are the windows of varying shapes and sizes, lending the building an almost factory-like appearance. The architect designed the south-east facade, facing towards the village, as a compact surface with rhythmically repeating strip windows. He interrupted the façade towards the street with a “notch”, bordered by four columns, accommodating the recessed, fully-glazed entrance. Conversely, the street facade was plain, partitioned only by small, asymmetrically placed strip windows; with the furthest section of the street facade bearing a minuscule inscription “Měšťanská škola” and a flagpole. The north-east annexe, attached perpendicularly to the building, is of three varying heights graduating down towards the base prism. The complex shape and irregular window layout of this tract is dictated by the varying functions of its separate parts: central stairway, gymnasium and canteen.
Long, wide corridors on all storeys, with hygiene facilities for pupils at one end, were designed facing to the north-west so that the classrooms could benefit from the natural daylight. This, together with the spacious and airy stairway, meant that the interiors fulfilled all the modern requirements for a hygienic and “healthy” life.
Apart from traditional classrooms, lecture rooms and teaching-staff amenities, the building also contains a library, a girls' handwork workshop and one for boys, two flats (for the janitor and the headmaster), etc. The notable interiors were luxuriously equipped with Functionalist furniture manufactured by Hynek Gottwald of Brandýs nad Orlicí.
In 1940, the newly-constructed building was presented as an exemplary case of a modern school building design at the exhibition “For New Architecture” at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. It was likewise presented in the monograph Nová česká architektura a její vývoj ve XX. století (New Czech Architecture and its Development in the XX Century): “Among all the newly-built schools, there are only a few exemplary ones worth mentioning, such as the V. Frýda Nursery School in Prague XIII-Vršovice, Bradova Nursery School in Prague XVI near Klamovka, the local primary and secondary school in Březnice designed by J. Kittrich and J. Hrubý, or the secondary school in Cerekvice n. L. designed by Č. Mužík.”
From 1942 to 1945, the building was occupied by the Germans who withdrew, leaving it derelict. Unfortunately, during the following decades, much construction work was carried out, disrupting the building's original purist appearance and the well thought out composition of its facade (the glazing of the entry niche and its subsequent bricking up with a low annexe, new sub-division of the windows, and changes to the colour of the facade).
