Eduard Prohaska Apartment Building

Part the west front of The Romans’ Square, left of the Millenium Church, there is the Eduard Prohaska Apartment Building, an edifice built in the style of Historicist Eclecticism, remarkable through its grandor and sobriety. Partially hidden by the foliage of the four linden trees in front, the three storey building engages into a harmonious dialogue with the monumental church across the street from it, both through the materials and the colours used.

Standing in front of the building, one notices the ground floor with prominent embossment, the whole level functioning as a pedestal for the rest of the edifice. In the central area of the facade, four monumental Corinthian pilasters rise two storeys high above the entrance, framing three bays. The window surrounds on the first floor get a different treatment from those on the rest of the facade: framed by Ionic pilasters, crowned by pediments ending in arc segments, and with balusters under the sill. The attention paid to this central space in terms of decoration reflects the importance it had in the hierarchy of the building, hosting, most probably, the owner’s apartment. The other spaces (inferior from the point of view of the treatment of the facade), were probably flats for rent.

The corniche at the top of the building is decorated with denticles and modillions. Above it, over the central part of the facade (in the axe of the entrance) rises a parapet made up of three segments with balusters.

The doors are richly decorated, with two medallions bearing the monogram “PE”, standing for the initials of the owner, Prohaska Eduard. Under the fanlight above the doors, there is an inscription, “1892”, marking the year the building was completed. According to the address catalogues from 1906 and 1910, in the apartment building now situated at the address Bishop Alexandru Bonnaz Street no. 14, lived, at the beginning of the 20th century, three members of the family of German origins: Eduard Prohaska Jr., Oszkar Prohaska and the widow Babetta Prohaska.

In 1909, Eduard Prohaska Jr. bought the Mechanical Mill “Elisabeta”, which had been built in 1896 by the Banat Society of Steam Mills, and which functioned, between 1880 and 1908, as a branch of “Elisabeta” Steam Mill from Budapest. “The Mechanical Mill Timişoara Inc. -- formerly The Mechanical Mill ‘Elisabeta’”, as is described in the Bulletin of the Ministry of Commerce, was founded on 25 May 1909, having the Prohaska family as the main shareholder and Eduard Prohaska Jr. as a director, and a social capital of 1.600.000 crowns. Subsequently, the mill was enlarged, a two storey high storehouse was added, and a 1 km long railway was built connecting the mill to the train station. The mill was powered by a steam engine and an electrical engine amounting to approximately 900 horsepower, hired 300 workers and 45 office clerks, and produced annually 600.000 quintals of flour and fodder. During The Second World War, the west wing of the mill was severely damaged by bombing and was never reconstructed. Later, during the communist regime, a block of flats was erected on the site. Subject to real estate speculations in the 1990s and afterwards, the Prohaska Mill located on Nicolae Titulescu Embankment (Splaiul Nicolae Titulescu) no. 9, is today abandoned and in an advanced state of decay.

But getting back to the Prohaska Apartment Building in Romanilor Square, according to information received from a visitor of this platform (to whom we thank for his contribution to this building file!): 1. In the 1920s, the building belonged to a company called Coronini JSC, which disappeared in the 1940s; / 2. another important information: Dumitru Gheorghiu, founding member and artistic director of the Romanian Opera in Timișoara, and Cornelia Iurasoc Gheorghiu, actress, director and manager of the Puppet Theater Timișoara and School of Popular Art, lived in this building.