Fabó Beáta - Gall, Anthony: I came from the East to a City of Great Palaces. Károly Kós, the early years 1907-1914 (Budapest, 2013)
Kós' First Steps as an Independent Architect
B Maternity Pavilion: Kós' illustration survives on a postcard to local friend Gábor Kabay. There are similarities with the Museum building and the Public Works project in Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mures. SZNM H Residence for the doctor, Samu Csulak, 1924 SZNM fotótár H Apartments for the Keresztes family apartment building, Street facade in 1970, Béla Kabay LATER WORK IN SEPSISZENTGYÖRGY / SF. GHEORGHE The residence of the Keresztes brothers, 19x3 The building was designed in line with the historic character of the street lined with terraced houses. It is reminiscent of the Calvinist Parsonage in Óbuda (Budapest) designed by Kós just a few years earlier. The two-floor building had one apartment on each floor, for each of the brothers. The puritan expression of the main elevation recognisable from Kós' other works is broken by the decorative relief above the upper floor windows. County Public Hospital Complex, 1913-1916 And it was in the autumn (of 1913) that I received what was my most considerable commission to date, and the nature of the commission was in itselfpeculiar: the task to design and oversee the construction of anew Public Hospital for Háromszék County’.KOS I991: m-Dr Kristóf Fogolyán, director of the county hospital from 1911 set out to create a modern public hospital complex. The first designs were made by town engineer Bierbauer (father of Virgil Bierbauer/ Borbíró), which, however, according to Kós, were rejected by the county authority. In their recommendation they called for a more up to date, pavilion-system hospital to be built on the eastern hillside near the town centre, whose style expresses ‘the unmistakable creative spirit of the Transylvanian people inherent in a Transylvanian town’. The first sketches were made in 1913-14, the final designs between 1914 and 1918. The landscaping work started in the autumn of 1915. Kós designed altogether five separate buildings to stand on the hillside overlooking the town, two of which were completed (the morgue and the dermatological clinic, demolished around 1960) and two were partially realised (the general hospital building and the office block). The construction of the mother-child unit was never started. Construction of the main building began in 1916 but the project was soon abandoned, and the building was eventually completed in a very different manner to the original designs. Town Hall and cinema, 1919 Kós' signature five-pointed tower (a main one with four turrets at the corners) is almost embryonic in this sketch, with the tower continuing the two-floor stone base of the building. The project was never realised. Residence of Samu Csulak, 1924 In the 1920's Kós designed several smaller villas, mostly with open porches. The relatively low-cost and traditionally built Csulak Villa served as a model for further designs for modern, comfortable artistic residential houses built in country towns. Keresztes family apartments, plans from 1924 Sepsíszentgyörgy City Archives 176
