Stanisław Tołpa City Park in Wrocław (former Nowowiejski Park)

The idea to create this park dates back from 1902. The names of the originator or designer are not mentioned in any historical documents. In 1905 the ground works were commenced; garden works continued till 1907. At the time of the Park’s creation the stretch of the current street Wyszyńskiego between the streets Prusa and Nowowiejska did not exist. Nowadays the Park is cut it its western part by Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego street which was drawn in 1936. The smaller fragment of the Park with the St. Michael Angel Church is customarily called the Small Park.

Stanisław Tołpa Park has a typical character of the 19th century city parks, with a loose composition of paths around central elements, such as the pond (which is a remainder of the river Oder’s arm) and a little hill. The Park has never been surrounded by a fence and locked. Two playgrounds have been recently created in the Park. Apart from them the only landscaping elements are numerous benches. Beside the recreational function, the Park plays also an important role for the citizens’ movement within the city.

A public park as an object of use fulfills a couple of basic social functions: it enables its users recreation and contact with nature, satisfies their esthetic needs, makes the contact with other people possible. The most important aspect of parks has always been that it offers an unpolluted space, accessible within a rapidly developing, modern city. Such an idea originates from the 19th century and was an answer to the problems that arose as a result of the urban growth and consequent difficulties with hygiene in big agglomerations. The public park was supposed to propagate culture, care for the beauty of nature and educate on nature-related issues.

At present the majority of Polish parks becomes an “arena” for opposing practices of ordering (care for the flora and structural elements) and disobedience, that is using elements and fragments of the park for individual needs and carrying out individual (quite often original) ideas and aspirations, which can both help in broadening social functions of those places, and – in extreme cases – lead to the destruction of infrastructure.