The House U Halánků

Proof that even a man can be a feminist is the patron and lover of progress: Vojta Náprstek, man behind the first Czech women’s association. He was born in an ancient house called U Halánků, which his parents back then bought as a brewery. After studying in Vienna, he spent nine years in the United States, where his bookstore became a regional centre for all Czech emigrants. In 1858 he returned to Prague and with the plentiful help of his mother Anna Náprstková he turned the family brewery into a wine distillery. However, his plan was to use some of the rooms in a different way: as a centre of Czech intelligence, where he could also place his technological exhibits for the intended industrial museum. Part of this project was also a lounge where František Studnička’s lecture on astronomy took place in 1865. At the instigation of Karolina Světlá, only women attended the lecture and it so happened that the American Ladies Club was founded that very evening. Náprstek continued to support the club’s activities and, in addition to educational lectures, he organized practical lessons for modern housewives. The demand for membership in the club was significant and it symbolized prestige in the society of the time, as evidenced by the famous members names such as Renata Fügner Tyršová, Eliška Krásnohorská, Marie Riegrová-Palacká and Charlotta Garrigue Masaryková. More than 1,500 women passed through the club from the foundation until the violent interruption of its activities after the communist takeover. Its activity was subsequently restored after 1996, along with the function recovery of the House u Halánků, which until then had served only as a depository for the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures – one of the oldest private museums in the Czech Republic.