What's in a Prague street name

Kloboučnická was nameless until 1920.

Our starting point is ‘klobouk’, which means ‘hat’. A diminutive form of this is ‘klobouček’, which means ‘cap’ (i.e. a little hat).

Meanwhile, a ‘kloboučnictví’ would either be a place where hats are made, or where they’re sold. Apparently, this trade is called ‘millinery’, which may be something everybody else on the planet is aware of, but I swear I’d never seen that word until three minutes ago.

Anyway, in 1909, a hat factory stared operating here. Run by Stanislav Bartoš (1866-1935), it mainly produced women’s hats, but also made straw hats for men, and gave the street its name.

An extra building with a Cubist façade, serving as an space to exhibit the hats, was added to the factory in 1914.

The factory expanded in the 1920s; when nationalisation kicked in after WW2, the factory was used by Tonak, a firm which still exists (https://www.tonak.cz/kontakt/).

There are some great pictures of the insides of the factory on https://www.historicka-praha.cz/tovarna-klobouky-bartos/.

The main entrance to the factory – on V Horkách – is long gone, having been replaced by a residential building. However, the abovementioned exhibition hall still exists at Kloboučnická 13.