What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 25 May 2022.

V Domově was built in 1925.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Prague didn’t become the capital of an independent country until 1918, and that the civil service had previously been based in Vienna.

As Prague gained in importance, its population grew rapidly too. In 1920, it was just under 730,000; by 1930, it would be over 950,000.

This created an acute need for housing for civil servants. One of the construction cooperatives that came to the rescue was called Domov (Home).

Domov built up a large chunk of this area between 1921 and 1925, with architect Ladislav Machoň (1888-1973) being responsible for the design.

Machoň’s most famous works include the interiors of the Klementinum, the Faculty of Law at Charles University, and the Machoňova pasáž in Pardubice (photo taken from https://kudyznudy.cz/aktivity/machonova-pasaz-v-pardubicich…).

Machoň was also responsible for the interior of the Koruna building on Václavák, which, in the 1930s, housed a fast-food canteen – one that was so successful that he apparently ended up designing the interior of another canteen in 1938 – this time on Regent Street in London.

Photo of the interior of the original Koruna taken from https://pragitecture.eu/vaclavske-namesti-8461-koruna-building/…. If you can give me any more info or photos on the one on Regent Street, I’ll feel extremely indebted to you.

Evidence of the fact that this neighbourhood was designed with civil servants in mind can be found in the names of various streets. Here’s an example: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/19/prague-3-day-8-na-hlidce/, and here’s another: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2022/11/19/prague-3-day-7-strazni/.