3 Maja street
From the monument we go down along a path in order to find ourselves on the former Franciszka Józefa street. Today it is 3 Maja street The Third of May
That street came into being at the end of the 19th century in the town district (already beyond its medieval centre) that developed dynamically. It owed its coming into being mainly to the new route, naturally imposed, that linked the old part of Cieszyn with the train station situated beyond the Olza river and the storage and industrial grounds developing fast around it. Towards the close of the 19th century the town authorities created a development plan of the socalled ‘Grand Cieszyn’ in which a number of new streets were marked out and the emergence of new districts was planned: housing estates, residential quarters and industrial districts. This is how a lot of new streets, situated close to each other, were built in Górne Przedmieście, and whose names reflected the respectful attitude of the town authorities to the ruling Habsburg dynasty: Heir Rudolph Square (Kronprinz Rudolfsplatz, today’s The Square of Freedom), Empress Elisabeth’s street (Kaiserin Elisabethstrasse, today’s Stalmacha street), Archduke Charles’ Square (Erzherzog Karlplatz, today’s Ks. J. Poniatowskiego Square), Archduke Eugene street (Erzherzog Eugenstrasse, today’s Błogocka street) and the Emperor Franz Joseph street (Kaiser Franz Josefstrasse). The street dedicated to the Emperor linked, in 1903, Rudolph square and Empress Elisabeth street with the Jubilee Bridge. Forming into two wide curves, it crossed the former grounds of numerous clay huts and brick kilns, in place of which a number of elegant Art Nouveau and modernistic residences were built shortly after. They were erected in large gardens whose main embellishment, until today, has been gorgeous magnolia bushes. At its end, at the vicinity of Lasek Miejski, the broad street crossed the Młynówka stream and the ground situated below (at present the buildings and factory rooms of the ‘Celma’ Factory of Electric Engines are there). In this way two little bridges were built; the second one, i.e. the one at the ‘Celma’ entrance, called Otto Wagner’s bridge, has an unconventional castiron balustrade with a sunflower theme.
Their design was made in 1894 for the Viennese Town Railway. The author, a Viennese architect Otto Wagner, was called ‘the father of the Viennese modernism’. In the balustrades the author hid his initials; the sunflower symbolizes the letter ‘O’, and the railing around it – ‘W’. How these balustrades, well-known all over Vienna, got to Cieszyn – nobody knows. Perhaps the Archdukal steelworks in Třinec cast them for the Capital of the Monarchy and some of them got to a small bridge on the Emperor’s street.
Photographs: Dominik Dubiel, Paweł Halama, Daniel Hryciuk, Magdalena Jańczuk, Renata Karpińska, Mariusz Makowski, Joanna Rzepka-Dziedzic, Anna Szostok-Fedrizzi, Henryk Tesarczyk
Translation from Polish: Lucyna Krzanowska and John Whitewood
Reproductions of exhibits, documents and photographs from the collections of:
- Museum of Cieszyn Silesia in Cieszyn,
- Cieszyn Historical Library,
- Cieszyn Branch of the State Archive in Katowice,
- Cieszyn Town Council,
- Museum of Beskidy in Frýdek-Mistek,
- private collection of Mariusz Makowski
- H. Wawreczka, J. Spyra, M. Makowski, ‘Cieszyn i Czeski Cieszyn na starych widokówkach i fotografiach’, WART, Nebory 1999