Before it became interesting to Belgrade's upper classes, Senjak was an excellent natural lookout. As many farmers kept their hay throughout the entire city, fires were quite frequent, so it was ordered for hay to be collected and kept in one place, and the area of modern Senjak was chosen, apparently also getting its name in the process (from the word seno, Serbian for hay). Especially bad was the fire in the late September 1857, when almost all stacks of hay stored in the Belgrade Fortress burned. Also, the hay for army horses was kept here in the late 19th century. A more romantic theory of the neighborhood's name (from the word sena, Serbian for 'shade' or 'shadow') developed later.