Baarova was built in the late 1800s.
Until 1947, it was called Kostelní – Church Street, after the church discussed yesterday on https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2026/11/07/prague-4-day-495-pod-farou/).
Jindřich Šimon Baar was born in Klenčí pod Čerchovem, near Domažlice, in 1869. He studied theology in Prague and was ordained as a priest in 1892.
He served as a chaplain in various locations – Přimda, Spálené Poříčí, Stochov, and Únětice – and then as a parish priest, starting in Ořech (1895-7; nowadays in Prague-West); then working in Klobuky (near Kladno) from 1899 to 1909.
He then returned to his role in Ořech, where he was parish priest again until his retirement in 1919. He moved back to his native village, Klenčí pod Čerchovem, dying there in 1925.
Baar was also a prolific writer, composing about forty prose works about country life, particularly in the Chod region (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/30/prague-2-day-25-chodska/), as well as two volumes of poetry. His works were especially popular among Czech emigrés to the United States.
Baar was friends with Karel Babka, an official at the Prague Municipal Authority, who had a daughter called Ludmila Babková. When Ludmila decided she needed a stage name for her acting career, she took inspiration from her father’s friend, and reinvented herself as Lída Baarová.
Baarová (1914-2000) starred in Czech, German, Italian and Spanish films, but her prolific career is much less remembered than the fact that she had an affair with Joseph Goebbels.
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