Žilina Gallery :: Fotogaléria mesta Žiliny

110 – Housing estate Hliny I – II (Bulvár)

Turistická informačná tabuľka č. 110 s QR kódom
(Foto: 25. 3. 2007)

The number of Žilina inhabitants increased after the War and the pressure to expand the town with new housing estates was growing. The first housing estates, Hliny I and II, were built in 1955 to 1959 on open land, southwards from the town marketplace, between the road to the hospital and the villa quarter called Malá Praha (today it is limited by Veľká okružná Street, Vojtech Spanyol Street, Juraj Fándly Street and Komenského Street). The design of the housing estate was prepared in accordance with the general extension plan of Žilina and the Žilina master plan of 1951, in which the architect Ladislav Bauer, as the designer of Stavoprojekt Žilina, allowed for the town’s population development up to 60,000 inhabitants (in 1950 Žilina had 28,571 inhabitants). The housing estates were built to include shops, a school, two kindergartens, nursery, post office, pub and public toilettes.
The construction of flats in the Housing estate Hliny I-II having 5 floors in general started in 1954 according to the design prepared by academic arch. Ferdinand Čapek and arch. Ivan Meliš. Today Anton Bernolák Street became the central commercial part of the housing estate. It is 245 metres long and Žilina inhabitants used to call it the Boulevard from the very beginning. All the houses along this street have commercial premises on the ground floor. Atelier premises are built on the sixth floor of the corner buildings.
A park with a statue of Anton Bernolák, a Roman-Catholic priest and linguist, the first codifier of literary Slovak, by academic sculptor Juraj Brišák was installed in 2002 amidst the one way roads. The statue of Anton Bernolák had already been installed in Žilina once. During the occupation of southern Slovakia by fascist Hungary, a statue of Anton Bernolák by academic sculptor Jozef Pospíšil was transferred from occupied Nové Zámky to Žilina in 1939. In Žilina it was installed on a massive stone pedestal on the first terrace of a balustrade under the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. During the balustrade reconstruction in 1941 to 1945, the statue was installed in front of the building of the then school at Hurbanova Street. After the occupation, the statue was returned back to Nové Zámky in 1948.
A closed block of dwelling houses was built west to the Boulevard as far as Komenského Street. On the east, the block was stretching to houses built around Spanyol Street. On the south, there was the housing estate Hliny I-II limited by the newly built Škultétyho Street, later Gagarinova Street, today Juraj Fándly Street. A commemorative plaque dedicated to academic architect Ferdinand Čapek by academic sculptor Ondrej Lipták is located on Anton Bernolák Street. It was granted by the town Žilina and association “Zbor Žilincov” to the memory of the important Žilina architect.
Construction of the first concrete block of flats in Žilina stared on 16 March 1959 on then Juraj Fándly Street as the basis of the new part of housing estate Hliny III-IV, according to designs by architects Čapek and Lupták. Before the construction it was necessary to demolish the remains of the original town brickworks with a pit left after mined clay, three family houses and all the small houses of Ružičkova colony that was situated on the building plot of the new housing estate limited by today Komenského Street, Juraj Fándly Street, Vojtech Spanyol Street, Tajovského Street and Mostná Street. Systems of assembled or cast concrete were used during the construction. There is a 40 to 45 metres wide two way road amidst the built-up area coming from Hliny I-II. The road is lined by 9-floor concrete blocks of flats and two-floor commercial buildings, to many of which a superstructure was built later. Inside the blocks, there are 5-floor blocks of flats, kindergartens and nurseries. The housing estate was closed on the southern side by a bilingual secondary grammar school and a branch of the National Bank of Slovakia. When the construction of the housing estate started, central heating and central warm water supply was not available in Žilina, and therefore several local coal boiler rooms with warm water boilers were built. After the first phase of construction of the Žilina heating plant was completed, a steam pipe to Hliny was constructed in 1967 and the exchanger stations started to be replaced gradually. However, chimneys of some boiler rooms have been preserved until the present.

Source: Mgr. Peter Štanský a doc. Ing. Novák Milan, PhD. Text prevzatý z webovej stránky TIK Žilina (kliknite): www.tikzilina.eu.