Empire style reached us in a diluted form, largely by literary channels and through the agency of Vienna. It is no mere accident then that the principal building in this style in Prague, the Baroque Monastery of the Irish monks, reconstructed as a Custom House, is a copy, very little altered, of Gentz’s Mint in Berlin. Similarly, in the provinces, the residences of country gentlemen, the middle-class dwellings, the churches, the schools, the toll-houses, the farm buildings and so forth are merely variations of the plans issued by the Ideenmagazine and the series of engravings published at the time. Architecturally considered, there is nothing impressive about these buildings, principally for the reason that, in contrast to the solid methods of the Baroque period, their builders were compelled to use materials of inferior quality. Yet the general effect is as a rule pleasing, never commonplace. Before long they were provided with a few set types, which were employed with unfailing certainty in all architectural undertakings, whether in relation to an actual building, or merely the architectural side of constructional engineering such as an iron bridge, fortifications, the equipment of a high road or a railway. This sureness and deliberate imitation of ready models resulted in a high standard of building in the Empire style, a standard which to-day is almost unattainable. Though we cannot speak of a school in their connexion, these provincial edifices are, in their proportions and their character, different from their counterpart in Austria and Germany.
Nevertheless, architecture in Bohemia, even in the metropolis, had long been a mere builder’s trade, in which the official design took the place of living form and style. No important orders were given, and the only problem to be solved was that of the flat-dwelling, which in Prague had become a necessity for the narrow confines of the old city. The first in date was that of Doubek, known as Platýz (1813–22), the largest private edifice in
