The completion in 1891 of the new museum at the top of Wenceslas Square was the crowning achievement of the Czech National Revival, a statement of nationhood that anticipated by thirty years the founding of the Czechoslovak state (an event which took place in its immediate vicinity in October 1918). But architecturally speaking, the museum was already dated. Its neo-classical design was somehow part of an older world. A new state demanded a new style, a new look, for both private and public building. And there was a whole generation of young architects on hand ready to oblige. The so-called ‘Šupich house’ was developed between 1911 and 1919 at a prominent intersection on Wenceslas Square next to the art nouveau