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Hotelier Jan Košíček
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The hotel was built in the year 1935
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"On an elevated plateau between the roads to the KČST cottages and to Březka-Libun is located a modern hotel in a style luckily amalgamating with the landscape character. 40 rooms with wonderful views of Czech Paradise. Hot and cold running water, a perfectly equipped hotel, great catering, easy to reach by car, garage, telephone no. 3. ..."
Jan Košíček was born in a quiet village - Horní Lochov – on 29th May, 1888 into a family of poor quarry worker. After attending school in nearby Ostružně he trained to be a waiter in Prague, in the well-known but now defunct "U Donátů" restaurant in Spálena Street. After training, he worked for some time in Prague and then, in 1907, aged 19, he went to Liberec.
He worked as head waiter at "Česka beseda" until 1913 and actively took part as an enthusiastic „Sokol“ activist in the life of Czech minorities. The years spent in this well-known North Bohemian town, an important departure point for the Ještědský and Jizerský Mountains, were of great importance to him. They taught him not only how to perfectly run services for the development of tourism, but also brought him ideas to set up his own business.
He was able to utilise his great experience with success in his home district. One year before the Great War started, he began renting the Czech Hikers’ Club in Horní Lochov below the Prachov Rocks, where he worked until 1917, when he had to give up running the place due to a serious injury he sustained on the Russian Front.
As there was a cottage of the Czech Hikers’ Club right in the middle of Prachov Rocks, who else could have taken it over but Jan Košíček himself, expert in local ways and in the hotel business. Soon the cottage in Prachov Rocks became a popular and sought-after hiking centre and resort for ever growing numbers of visitors, who came to appreciate the willingness and care shown by Jan Košíček and his wife.
After 10 years and through remarkable entrepreneurialism and courage, Jan Košíček began his own grand project, a hotel business, designed by Ing. arch. Stejskal.
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In the beautiful surroundings of the Prachov Rocks, with enchanting views of Czech Paradise and the mountain ranges in the distance, of the lands of the Czech brotherhood village of Moravsk, destroyed in the 30-Years War, construction of today’s Parkhotel "Košíček" was begun in 1934. It was built in the so-called Prachov building style with the use of local materials. For financial reasons, it was necessary to downscale the original plan, but despite this, when the modern building, with its shining, pale red roof and white walls contrasting with the dark rocks and forest, was opened in 1935, it turned out to be the largest and most perfectly equipped hotel in all of the Czech Paradise.
Košíček’s hotel, surprising even the fussiest of guests, understandably became the most sought after place to stay in this area of beauty, as well as become a permanent memorial to single-minded and exemplary work. It will always remind us of its selfless founder, who tragically died on the 23rd of May, 1937 at the age of 50 on the Libun railway crossing. The irony of fate, just when the tourist industry and nearby towns to which he dedicated so much of his energy were picking up – met him below the ridge of the Prachov Rocks, where he spent his youth...
And so in Czech Paradise there remains a permanent memorial to his life’s work, many years of hard work in the tourist industry that brought so many benefits to his home district.
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