The post-war situation at the Sázavan national enterprise was not easy in terms of manpower. The plant was faced with an outflow of labour to the borderlands and a high turnover of employees. This was due to the fact that the company was mainly staffed by women, especially young girls who had just finished their apprenticeships and who often left Zruč after a few years to join their partners. However, there were many more young women than there were places in the company's hostels. There was only one bachelor's house in Zruč, built during the war years. However, its capacity could not meet the needs of the company, so young women were accommodated in unsatisfactory conditions in the factory building and young men in the community centre.
The solution to this situation was to help build two industrial youth homes, each for 300 people. The site for their construction was chosen on the basis of Emanuel Hruška's new regulatory plan. The plan originally envisaged four male boarding houses and six female boarding houses for a total of 3,400 apprentices, trainees and unmarried youth. The entire town was then to grow to 12,000 inhabitants. These goals were never achieved, however, and only two dormitories were built, the first behind the community centre above the freedmen's hall and the second between the family houses around Revoluční and Okružní Streets. Their location was mirrored along the urban axis leading from the entrance to the factory premises through today's Square of Peace, continuing along the green avenue towards Chabeřická Street.
The project for the dormitories was approved in January 1948 and construction soon began. The dormitory behind the hotel was completed first, and in 1949 the construction of the second dormitory began. It was a three-storey building of brick construction with a simple rectangular plan, from which only the central bay on the front side protruded. The main entrance was covered by a canopy and was emphasized by a wide staircase with rounded corners. The centre of the rear facade was dominated by a staircase window running through all floors. The whole building was plastered smoothly, the roof was flat, accentuated by a crown cornice.
The internal layout was divided by a corridor running the entire length of the building, from which entrances led to individual rooms. The staircase, washrooms and common rooms were situated on the central axis, and the rooms were located further along the corridors. Next to the entrance hall on the ground floor, instead of two rooms, there was a manager's flat consisting of a kitchen, a room, a hall, a pantry and a bathroom with a toilet. There were then washrooms and toilets on either side of the staircase. The rooms were furnished only with furniture, all sanitary facilities were shared. The floor in the rooms was poured with xylolite, terrazzo was laid in the corridors and fireclay tiles in the washrooms. The rooms, which were approximately 5.00 x 6.50 m in size, usually housed 6-8 girls. It is not without interest that in the second boarding house Miloš Forman filmed some scenes from the film The Love of a Salesman.
Both homes are architecturally similar, but have several differences. The first dormitory housed the company's shoe shop, located on the ground floor on the side by the community centre. With a sales area, administration room and staff facilities, it occupied the space of four rooms. An entrance with a shop window was created in place of the end window and the whole shop was structurally separated from the dormitory. This shop existed until the demise of Sázavan in the 1990s. The second dormitory was initially used only for accommodation; unlike the first, the basement housed garages, which were directly connected to Okružní Street due to the sloping terrain. Above the garages a canopy was built in the form of a wide cornice encircling the outer third of the building. At the beginning of the 1970s, part of the ground floor was adapted for the needs of the health centre and for this reason a new entrance was created from the side towards náměstí Míru.
The older dormitory is still in its original state with modifications to the interior, during which several apartments were created. In addition, windows were replaced and part of the facade was modified. The ground floor of the younger dormitory is still occupied by several doctors' offices, while the upper two floors have been adapted for a children's home, which has been operating here since 2002. The entire building was renovated in 2019, during which the windows were replaced and a new unsightly facade was created.
