What's in a Prague street name

Za Zelenou liškou was built in 1935.

Some time before 1720, an inn was built, south of Pankrác (then a village) and near the road that led from Prague to České Budějovice. It had a green fox – a zelená liška – painted on its gable.

The fox then gave its name to the inn, which was a popular stopover for travellers (and their horses). Apparently, in the 19th century, bands and theatre groups played here, and it was much frequented by famous personalities. This cartoon is from 1860.

Around the turn of the century, it was bought by a company called Saxl, who turned it into a shoe factory; this ad proves it was still functioning as a restaurant in 1899.

In 1922, it was purchased by František Janeček, an engineer and entrepreneur.

He used it as a factory for the production of machine guns and hand grenades (pictured in 1930).

In 1929, Janeček would found the motorcycle producer JAWA (JA = Janeček; WA = Wanderer, the German bike producer that Janeček purchased in the same year).

In 1953, the JAWA factory was given the decidedly more communist name of Závody 9. května (‘9th of May Enterprises’) and became a semiconductor plant.

In the 1930s, a housing estate was built round here; it too was called Zelená liška – and all our recent posts have dealt with this area. It didn’t have to undergo any 9th May renaming nonsense under the Communists.

Built between 1932 and 1936, the estate had a functionalist laundry building. Sadly, the most renown this ever gained was in May 1945, when it served as a morgue for the many local victims of the Prague Uprising (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/04/02/prague-4-day-348-obeti-6-kvetna/).

It functioned as a laundry until 1995, and was demolished in 2006. There are some truly great pictures on https://www.industrialnitopografie.cz/cs/structures/ustredni-pradelna-sidliste-u-zelene-lisky-na-pankraci-15447.