The grave monument of the wholesale merchant Josef Novák was erected according to a design by Osvald Polívka, a graduate of the German technical school and author of numerous important Prague buildings and banks. Done in the Czech Neorenaissance, Neobaroque, and Art Nouveau styles, all these buildings show a clear attempt at creating a sense of harmony between architecture, fine art, and applied art.

After completing an apprenticeship in Broumov, Josef Novák Sr. initially worked as a shop assistant. Later, he and his family purchased the building housing the Knitl thread-making and toy workshop at Vodičkova Street 699/28. Following the death of his brother, Novák took over as head of the family business with the goal of constructing a shopping and office building in the Parisian style. This is also how Osvald Polívka ended up designing the Novák family’s grave monument, for Polívka was the winning architect in a competition for the newly built U Nováků retail building. (Jan Kotěra submitted a design as well, but its somewhat reserved facade that in many ways recalls the District House in Hradec Králové did not meet Novák’s vision of a stately, ornamental facade adorned with various forms of fine art.) Unfortunately, Josef Novák died in 1906, just two years after his grand Art Nouveau building was completed.

The monumental grave monument, which blends elements of Art Nouveau and modernism, consists of a stepped ledger and a stele made of polished black granite, with a recessed circular section adorned with a white marble cross. The cross forms a visually impressive background for a statue of Christ designed by A. Procházka and cast by Karel Bendelmayer, then co-owner of the Bendlmayer & Červenka company. The areas on the square part of the stele outside the circle are filled with a floral mosaic on a golden background. The mosaic was realized at the Innsbruck workshop of the Neuhauser company, which also worked on the U Nováků building. Two Art Nouveau planters with figures of resting boys stand in front of the stele. The plinth with the Christ statue was originally covered in a massive, delicately worked laurel branch wrapped in a broad ribbon (stolen in 2011). Both the planters and the laurel branch with ribbon were designed by Hanuš Folkmann. A similar decorative element by Folkmann can be seen on Josef Fanta’s crypt for the industrialist and philanthropist Bohumil Bondy at the New Jewish Cemetery (36, 40).

Josef Novák Jr., among other things a renowned amateur numismatist and collector, further expanded his father’s business, in part thanks to his 1918 marriage to Libuše Marie, the daughter of the textile industrialist Cyril Bartoň of Dobenín and granddaughter of the mayor of Náchod. In 1927–1929, the couple expanded the U Nováků building onto V Jámě Street. This expansion, which was realized after Polívka’s return from a trip to the United States, gave the building the character of a late modernist urban palace with shopping arcades. Libuše Marie was also an important philanthropist. As the presumed heir to her father’s large estate in Zbraslav, and after discussing the matter with him, she made the newly renovated chateau in Zbraslav available to the State Collection of Old Art – today’s National Gallery.