The so-called Officers’ Park was established at the confluence of the Elbe and Orlice rivers when the military fortress still existed. Originally, a military cemetery was to be built there in 1866, but a more generous site was found in Pouchov and the first city park could be developed there instead. Soon there was a restaurant, a bowling alley and a music pavilion,
a gardener’s house (which stood in a different location than now), and greenhouses. Although the former fort lands were transferred to the city in 1894, the park was owned by the army until 1925, but it was open to the public.
In 1897, the first overall plans for the northern part of the park were drawn up. Two designs by František Thomayer, a prominent garden and park architect and pomologist, who studied in Germany and France, have survived. The overall design for the north-eastern part of the park with the entrance promenade was realized, but the second surviving, detailed design for
a richly ornamental flowerbed with a gazebo was probably not. František Thomayer decided to solve the limited space of the confluence of the Elbe and Orlice rivers as a sequence of several units of different character, different and often contradictory scenery. The design concept can be compared to the park in the town of Hranice na Moravě built in the early years of the 20th century thanks to the care of the local Ornamental Society. In Hradec Králové, Thomayer designed an entrance piazza in the form of a promenade with a central flowerbed, from which the residential, social space of the park sloped down. Like in Hranice na Moravě, this part of Hradec did not lack a social (musical) gazebo (the existing one was supplied by
Mr. Söhr’s company from Kukleny in 1893) and a small brick restaurant building from earlier times still stood here. Then there was an artificial mound with a tunnel, in front of which, as evidenced by period photographs, stood the old gardener’s house. Thomayer designed
a large alpine area on the south side of the mound. The south-west corner of the park was not developed and for a long time there was only a lawn and later a vegetable garden. The mound allowed elevated views and characteristic vistas of groups of trees and shrubs with a strong vertical element. Thomayer used the distraction of several view landmarks, as well as the sequence of revealing different facets and areas of the park, as a staging element in an otherwise limited plot of land sandwiched between two rivers.
In 1919, during the writer’s lifetime, the park was renamed to Jiráskovy sady Park after the writer Alois Jirásek. On 5 June 1922, a monument to Alois Jirásek with motifs from his novels was installed at the head of the park’s entrance promenade. In 1931, a year after Jirásek’s death, the stone stele was supplemented by a bronze plaque with Jirásek’s portrait. In 1925, the transfer to the municipality was initiated due to lack of funds for maintenance, but the army retained the property and its lease (music pavilion, restaurant). The final takeover of the entire park by the municipality was completed in 1932. In 1925, work began on the south-western section behind the dividing wall which was converted into a rose garden. The project was designed by the garden architect Josef Kumpán. In 1924–1925 Josef Kumpán advised
the technical office on the plan to create the Great City (Velký Hradec), which was coordinated by the architect Vladimír Zákrejs, and at the same time he carried out an unspecified garden arrangement in Střelecká Street in 1924. On this occasion he was probably entrusted with
the redesign of the Jiráskovy sady Park. Kumpán designed mainly villa gardens, but also city parks and cemeteries. He tried to apply the richest possible composition of planting to
the often limited space to make it attractive for visitors throughout the season. In contrast to the formalist generation Thomayer belonged to, he did not try to compose the beds in formal, ornamental arrangements, but drew on nature’s irregularity and variety. The new rosarium, designed in a central design with paths, pergolas and vases and joined by a lawn parterre with a later sculptural garden by Josef Škoda, planted in 1934, completed the park in the south-west corner. In the early 1930s, the original restaurant was rebuilt and completed into
a half-timbered pavilion building designed by Jan Rejchl. In 1935, the eastern part of the park was completed with the transfer of the wooden Orthodox church of St. Nicholas from the village of Malé Poľany near Medzilaborce, Slovakia.
Since the Důstojnický park/Jiráskovy sady Park was completed between the wars according to the well-thought-out plans of our most important designers and their concept was permanent without major interventions, it has been preserved in its original form in two organically interconnected layers: Thomayer’s from the turn of the century and Kumpán’s from the 1920s.
LZL
