What's in a Prague street name

Another super-new street, only this time with an adequate picture of the street sign. Progress.

Jaroslav Mužík was born in Nové Strašecí, near Rakovník, in 1858, but moved to Nusle shortly after. At school, one of his teachers was Petr Mužák, husband of the writer Karolina Světlá (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/28/prague-1-day-153-karoliny-svetle/). He then went to university in Vienna.

In 1887, Mužík became a member of Nusle’s town council; a year later, he founded the local Sokol branch (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/26/prague-2-day-114-sokolska/; that Nusle Sokol will appear in at least two future posts). He also founded a local bank.

In 1892, he was elected Mayor, a position that he would hold until 1899. During this time, Nusle was promoted from town to city status, and construction progressed in a big way.

You may have noticed how many streets in this series (and in the brief-ish Nusle section when we were talking about Prague 2) were built in 1892, and that they were named after ancient Czech figures – it turns out that Mužík was a keen historian, so presumably this was his decision.

However, with construction often comes destruction, and some older structures – such as the walls stretching from Vyšehrad (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/26/prague-2-day-118-vysehradska/) to Folimanka (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/19/prague-2-day-77-na-folimance/) – were demolished.

Mužík would be called back into the role of Mayor in 1914, and held it throughout World War One.

He died in 1924 – two years after Nusle had become part of Prague – and is buried at Vinohrady Cemetery.