Josef Niklas

An architect of Czech revival architecture. He was a student of Karl Wiesenfeld at the Prague Polytechnic Institute, then he was  a trainee  by Heinrich J. Frenzel in Prague and Leopold Mayer in Vienna. He made a study tour through Germany, France and Italy. He became an assistant of Bernhard Grueber at the Prague Polytechnic Institute in 1849 and was appointed a teacher of drawing and building at K.K high school in Prague. He applied for habilitation (the qualification for teaching) of practical building teaching at the  Prague Polytechnic Institute and in 1864, he obtained  professorship at the department of civil engineering for Czech language. He took over a department  in the Czech part of Prague Polytechnic Institute that had been established shortly before where he remained until his death (he was a rector here between 1873–74). Together with F. X. Šanda, he published Joendl’s advice on building  (1862) and Architectural styles from the oldest times until present(1865). He is an author of many ecclesiastical Neo-Gothic and Neo-Renaissance municipal buildings in Bohemia. Apart of participation in the reconstruction of the Estate Theatre, he realized the wooden New Town Theatre (1858) and Švanda’s Arena Theatre in Pštroska (1869), he participated in competition for a national theatre (1866) and he elaborated the project of the German Theatre in Pilsen.