Before Zelená Liška stood a humble inn. A green fox adorned its sign. That’s how it got its whimsical name. The Zelená Liška inn predates 1720. It stood near Pankrác village. Travelers on the road from Prague to Benešov and České Budějovice rested there. They could stable their horses and spend the night.
Zelená Liška wasn’t just an inn. It held a piece of Prague’s industrial past. In the late 19th century the Saxl company bought the property. They manufactured shoes there. In 1922 František Janeček acquired it. He was the founder of Jawa in Nusle. He incorporated the inn into his Zbrojovka ing. F. Janeček factory. The factory produced machine guns and other wartime materials.
Both the inn and the factory are gone. Today modern buildings and administrative offices stand in their place. One building the original Jawa factory entrance remains. A testament to the past. A bus stop on Budějovická street still bears the Zelená Liška name. So does the street Za Zelenou liškou. It runs past the former Zelená Liška site. A nearby settlement also commemorates this historic location.
But Zelená Liška’s story doesn’t end there. A housing estate was built nearby. It’s named after the old inn. Built between 1932 and 1938 it exemplifies functionalist architecture. Architect Antonín Černý designed it. František Albert Libra Jiří Král Bohumír and Ladislav Kozák also contributed. The estate housed minimal social housing. It provided affordable homes for Prague’s poorest residents.
A machine workshop was part of the original development. It served as a makeshift morgue in 1945. Hundreds of Nusle residents who died during the Prague uprising were laid to rest there. It was later demolished in 2006. The Zelená Liška housing estate remains a unique example of social housing. A legacy of a bygone era. It stands as a reminder of Prague’s rich history and architectural innovation. The legacy of the Zelená Liška lives on in more ways than one.