Sokolská Street is historically the main connection from the city to Fryšták and Holešov. It starts behind the bridge over the Dřevnice River, where it connects to Dlouhá Street. It originally ended on the Zlín and Kostelec boundaries near the confluence of the Dřevnice and Fryštácký streams (formerly Januštice). Today, the street continues along the stream to the north to the edge of the built environment of Zlín at the trolleybus turntable and the Vršava sports complex.
By a decision of the municipal council in 1887, the street was given the name Padělky after the local rail line first mentioned in 1628. After the construction of the Sokol Organisation building (1921), the council decided in 1925 to change its name to Sokolská Avenue. During the Second World War, due to pressure from the German occupation authorities, it was renamed třída Vítězství (Victory Avenue) in 1941, which was to commemorate the successful advance of German troops in the war. Immediately after liberation in May 1945, the Zlín National Committee decided to change the name to Sokolská. In 1978 it was changed once more to Lidových milicí (People's Militia) Avenue and since February 1990 it has been called Sokolská again.
Although it was one of the most important roads connecting Zlín to the local trade route towards Holešov, the first houses in the area near the river did not appear until as late as the second half of the 18th century, which was related to the business activities of the owner of the estate, Count František Antonín Khevenhüller. Around 1765, he brought subjects from his estate in Styria in southern Austria to Zlín to introduce fruit growing to the area. They settled in Zlínské paseky (today the intersection of Gahurova, K Pasekám, and Nábřeží streets in the Jižní Svahy housing estate), but also in Padělky, where they formed the settlement sv. Antonína (also called Cigánov due to the unusual appearance of the incoming settlers, cigán meaning a gypsy in local dialect). The irregular development of a village square in the area of today's intersection of Sokolská, Vývoz and Na Výsluní streets has preserved its rural character to this day.
Another project of the local aristocratic administration along the route of today's Sokolská Street was the construction of the first residential colony of Zlín consisting of twenty-seven small terraced houses for the employees of the large estate. For the first time, the houses were captured by a cadastral map of Zlín from 1829. The individual houses had small gardens differing in size from one another.
In the first decades of the 20th century, major changes took place in the western part of the street near the bridge over the Dřevnice River. In 1904, the builder Josef Winkler built a two-storey representative villa at today's intersection with Na Výsluní Street. He was the first wealthy citizen of Zlín to situate his family house outside the city centre, thus showing a new way of living for the wealthy. He was soon followed by Tomáš Baťa in nearby Čepkov. The villa, today known for its second owner - the mayor of Zlín František Štěpánek, had fallen into disrepair in recent decades and the existing building collapsed during reconstruction. A practically-new building was created on the site of the original villa, partly built in the spirit of revivalism. It extends considerably to the former garden (2020), however. The character of the crossroads, reminiscent of buildings from the beginning of the last century, was irretrievably destroyed.
In 1921, the building of the Sokol Organisation was completed, later supplemented by an outdoor stadium (1926). The entrance area of Sokolská Street to the left behind the bridge (today's concrete bridge was built in 1926, rebuilt and widened in 1936) was filled in 1929 with the visually-dominant Hotel Maca (now Hotel Saloon). The part of the street behind the Sokol building was gradually filled with a diverse mix of houses intended for living and business.
In 1911, Ludvík Zapletal founded a shoe factory in No. 563. Bohuslav Lacina had been producing women's shoes in house no. 557 since 1928, and Josef and František Batík had a small factory for trainers opposite the Sokol building. To this day, we can also find examples of single-storey residential houses from the same period in the street. No. 562, which belonged to the family of Leopold Batík, had architect Miroslav Lorenc living in it. This architect won numerous contracts on Sokolská Street for the construction of both family houses (nos. 418, 3337) and apartment buildings (nos. 426, 430).
In the first half of the 20th century, the street gradually acquired the character of a bustling thoroughfare. In the western part, houses for services and business predominated, in the eastern part housing. The Padělky district on the right side of Sokolská street was filled with Baťa houses at the end of the 1920s, of which only one row in Padělky IX street survives today.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Baťa houses in the Padělky and Kůty districts were demolished. A group of standardised prefabricated panel houses grew in their place in the 1950s. The thirteen-storey house with 102 flats designed by Miloš Totušek became the dominant feature of the Sokolská street in 1968, and the space near Lorenc's apartment buildings was complemented by several residential tower houses by Adolf Šrom from 1976.
Today's built environment of Sokolská Street presents a compilation of the development of non-Baťa residential construction in Zlín in the 20th century. The continuation of Sokolská street heading north along the Fryštácký brook has a different character. The original route of the street led along today's Partyzánská Street. In the second half of the 1930s, today's street leading to the Fryštácký stream was built. Kaufland (1997) was built on the site of the former football field, and the overall character is of an exit road from the city. In the near future, it will be rebuilt into a high-capacity motorway feeder towards Fryšták.
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