The Municipal Savings Bank in Německý Brod was founded in 1862 and changed site on several occasions, though it was always looking to construct its own suitably prestigious building.

This vision was finally realized in June 1930, when the Savings Bank—by then an important financial institution in the town and a branch of the National Bank of Czechoslovakia—succeeded, despite objections from the Heritage Office and opposition from the wider public, in securing the town council’s approval for the construction of the first modern building on the square. Two 17th-century houses, featuring richly decorated Renaissance timber ceilings and listed as heritage buildings since the 1920s, had to make way for the new structure. The Savings Bank also disregarded the condition that any new building erected on the site “must not disturb the historic character of the square”. The mayor, Robert Neuern, who represented the bank during negotiations, justified the decision by claiming that the architects “wished to express the spirit of the age through contemporary architecture.” Thus, despite the systematic, nearly thirty-year-long efforts of the former imperial conservator of the town, Zdeněk Wirth, and his fellow heritage specialists, the Savings Bank succeeded in breaking the much-admired architectural unity of the historic square. The architect of the building, selected through a design competition, was František Albert Libra (1891–1958).

He designed a substantial two-storey building whose compact mass closes off two fronts of the continuous row development—the junction of Dolní street and the south-eastern corner of Havlíček Square. Unlike the original buildings, it was set back to align with the new street line of the square and was raised by one storey to match the height of the neighbouring house, no. 91. The main facade, articulated only by windows and cornices, was broken on the ground floor by a deeply recessed main entrance. This was intentional, for “the depositor does not wish to be seen either when entering or leaving the savings bank, nor when conducting business at the counter or the cash desk.”

In the interior, Libra designed a rational layout that combined the security and functional requirements of the institution’s operations. The ground floor was intended for customer services and the bank’s day-to-day activities. Behind the elegant entrance vestibule lay a spacious central hall, illuminated by daylight filtering through a glass-block ceiling. This hall connected the operations of the banking and mortgage departments. Libra divided the space using only simple partitions.

The upper floors and part of the attic were designated as accommodation for the bank’s clerks. The attic also contained a laundry and ironing room, while the basement housed the archive, records office, and a flat—probably for the caretaker. Owing to the sloping terrain towards Dolní street, space was created for a small shop. The entire reinforced-concrete building was centrally heated.

The result was a structure symbolizing financial stability, solidity, and permanence. The interiors—designed by the architect down to the smallest details, including the furniture—unfortunately no longer survive, having been lost during a series of renovations, the most recent of which took place in 2019.