Park Jordana (English)

Z Historia Wisły

Park Jordana (Jordan Park)

A public park for physical games and activities for children and youth. It was the first facility of its kind in Europe, organized and supervised by Henryk Jordan.

This well-known doctor in Krakow and professor at Jagiellonian University opened the park in 1889 on the so-called Czarnowiejski meadows, on the grounds of the former agricultural-industrial exhibition. According to Jordan's vision, the youth (boys and girls from elementary, secondary, and vocational schools) would, under the supervision of instructors (leaders), practice physical fitness and sports games. Jordan and his collaborators aimed to foster "a healthy, physically, mentally, and morally strong, wise, patriotic, and socially harmonious society." The park included 12 sports fields and a swimming pool. In the wooden pavilions that were built, there were exercise rooms, changing rooms, showers, and storage areas.

Wisła and Jordan Park

The relationship between Wisła and Jordan Park was close from the very beginning, and quite literally, as in its early days, Wisła played its matches "on the racetrack located outside Dr. Jordan's park." The young high school students likely did not imagine that in 1922, a Wisła stadium would be built on this site, and that a hundred years later, Wisła would still be neighbors with Jordan Park.

A close collaborator of Jordan was Tadeusz Łopuszański, the founder of Wisła, who in 1894 co-authored a book dedicated to Dr. Jordan's life's work ("Dr. Jordan's Municipal Park in Kraków").

Jordan's contributions to promoting football in our country are invaluable, as the first football was kicked on Polish soil in 1890, right in his park. Jordan brought the football back from his travels abroad in the fall of 1890. It was included in the "program of activities for high school youth" only in the "summer season of 1891." However, at the end of that summer season, on Sunday afternoon, August 30, 1891, the first official demonstration of a football game in front of an audience took place in Dr. Jordan's Park in Kraków. Football was one of those activities meant to foster competition and immediately became a favorite game among older youth, who dedicated up to an hour and a half daily to it. Although the football activities were led by an instructor, the game often resembled a chaotic chase of boys after the ball, as the rules of football were not yet known at the time.

In Jordan Park, "football matches" were mainly played on non-standard-sized fields numbered 2, 3, and 8, which were quite popular as they were completely bare. Another field (just behind the Rudawa River, known as the "corner" field) was also used for football, but its assignment was considered "a stroke of bad luck [...] as it was covered... with grass." The rules of the game were usually set before the match, and they played with a large, very soft ball, as footballs were handmade at the time, non-standard in size, and varied in weight.

This was the general state of football in Kraków until 1906, when the first proper football clubs began to form. Even before that, young football enthusiasts started leaving the welcoming grounds of Jordan Park and filling the nearby Błonia, focusing solely on playing football. This is how the Wisła players began, experiencing their first contact with organized sport in Jordan Park, which was common practice for Kraków youth at the time. Many of them worked in the park as "leaders" – i.e., caretakers and instructors for the children and youth practicing there.

In the spring of 1906, freshly founded at the encouragement of Professor Łopuszański, Wisła began playing regular matches on the Błonia, mostly against teams they encountered by chance. This independence later cost Wisła, as none of its players were included in the famous two matches against Lviv teams in June 1906. However, Wisła did not completely sever its ties with Jordan Park and continued using its equipment. For example, Wisła used "flags, usually borrowed from the pavilion caretaker in Dr. Jordan's Park" to mark the playing field on the Błonia. Jordan Park was also where Wisła’s changing rooms were located in the club’s early years. The famous park caretaker, Mikołaj Śliwa, also lent them footballs, while the players took care of their own football uniforms. Besides Błonia, Wisła also used Jordan Park's Field XII in its early years.