What's in a Prague street name

Two mildly dissatisfying statements to kick this one off: Ke Krčské stráni was ‘probably’ built ‘sometime in the 1940s’, and seems to not get its own street sign.

Then, for its name, while Na krčské stráni is located on a hillside (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/05/26/prague-4-day-387-na-krcske-strani/), Ke Krčské stráni leads towards one.

It’s nice and green round here, so much so that two maple trees in the street were declared ‘significant’ in 2025.

And the trees around here certainly are: one was planted in 1985 by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and the second was planted a year later by his countryman fellow author, John Updike. Why here?

Well, Ke Krčské stráni, now decidedly residential, was, from 1976 to 1986, the home of the Jazz Section of the Musicians’ Union. In 1985, they planted trees and bushes around here, hoping to form a green belt.

1985 was also the 40th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, so the Jazz Section asked UN headquarters in New York if they could build something to commemorate that. Permission was granted, and a plaque was created (also celebrating the anniversary of the end of WW2).

Vonnegut happened to be visiting Prague at the time, and came here to plant his tree. Others would turn up, often in secret, in later years, to plant their own trees – including one Smíchov-born Madeleine Albright.

Here is a picture of Vonnegut visting the Jazz Section on Ke Krčské stráni (credit to Jiří Kučera; photo taken from the Jazz Section’s Facebook page).

This was all a bit too Western for 1985/6, so, in the latter year, the authorities got rid of the plaque and messed around with the greenery so that the problematic American jazz trees were unrecognisable.

The leaders of the Jazz Section were also thrown into prison, being released in January 1987, with a huge effect on the health of many of them.

A new monument was unveiled in 2004, naming those diplomats and others who participated in the planting of the trees at the time: https://www.pametni-desky-v-praze.cz/2020/10/10/jazzova-sekce-v-parciku-nedaleko-ulice-ke-krcske-strani-praha-4-krc/.

Sometimes, when I sit down to write these posts, I think: ‘oh, this might be a mundane one’. I love it when I turn out to have been wrong.