Csepely-Knorr Luca: Barren Places to Public Spaces. A History of Publick Park Design in Budapest 1867-1914 (Budapest, 2016)
Public Park design in Budapest during the second half of the 19th Century
not yet been decided, the placement of public buildings, the functional distribution of districts, and, as a separate expectation, the introduction of “ideas for creating urban greenery” was mentioned as well.175 The first prize was given to the submission with the pseudonym ‘Veritas’ designed by the engineer and influential urban planner, Lajos Lechner (1833- 1897), later to become the Head Engineer and Director of Public Works for Budapest His plan did not show major changes compared to the Boards plan, but he gave special attention to development issues on the Buda side. The Ring Road there, realised decades later, was part of his ideas. According to Lechner, the roads were too wide in Berlin, and the width of the Ringstrasse in Vienna could only be justified because of the horse tramway.176 Although he agreed that the ring road and boulevard system of Paris is the way for future city development, he did not use these in his own entry. He believed that the Danube was enough to bring fresh air to the city, therefore he did not think the creation of green spaces in the inner parts of the city was necessary. His plans, based on the published ideas of the Board, were realistic, however very conservative. From the point of view of public urban green spaces, the competition entry ‘Metropolis’ by the leading romantic architect, Frigyes Feszi (1821- 1884) was especially important, as it advocated the creation of a continuous green corridor outside the city of Pest, and it also contained numerous smaller green oases in the heavily built-up city centre area. He was against the then fashionable notion that the building plots in the city centre were too expensive to be used as green spaces.177 He recommended the creation of a public park on the (at that time) rocky Gellért Hill, and new development in the Tabán area just below Buda Castle. In his plans, parks and promenades had special importance. He suggested one be built on the Danube embankment, and one below Buda Castle Hill, too. Some of his plans for individual squares survived, and will be analysed in connection with Ferenc József Square.178 The vision created by the London-based architects, Klein and Fraser also has interesting points in terms of green policy. They dealt with the issues of the pre-planting of areas marked out for later development.179 Their plan recommended the creation of one sizable square from the existing József and Színház Squares,180 which could serve as a main, central square for the capital. They also recommended the creation of a new forest on unused areas in Pest.181 The winner, as mentioned previously, was Lechner s easy-to-realise plan, which was unfavourable from the point of view of green spaces. Lechner ruled out the green belt around Pest, only recommending the implementation of the Northern part of it. However he recommended the enlargement of Városliget Park towards the Danube and also as far as the Kerepesi Road.182 Although they awarded the prize to the least green plan in the competition, the Board did not stop dealing with the questions of urban greenery, and with the idea of a systematic linked urban green network. This was most probably due to Andrássy, who wished to implement Széchenyi’s ideas, and to the deputy president, Frigyes Podmaniczky183 who was especially keen on the creation of urban green spaces.184 Podmaniczky s commitment was recorded in his diary, where he referred to British examples of city planning, writing: “following the example of the British, wherever there is a square in our capital which we can do without, it must be turned into a promenade".185 Tire Act which enabled the creation of the Board of Public Works also determined its responsibilities. Among these were the preparation and commission of development plans for the whole city and for the districts separately, the announcement of planning competitions with “an especial focus on the placements of squares, parks and recreational facilities”.'66 Besides the green belt, the Board also dealt with the parks in the city centre, such as the Danube embankments, that they enriched with smaller greenspaces.TheBoard discussed the regulation plans for Erzsébet, Vörösmarty and Kálvin Squares as well. In thenplans they recurrently used Feszl’s ideas, as the following chapters will discuss. Green spaces in the main urban development projects City development competitions and large-scale projects based on these determined the evolution of the new capital. Although Haussmann’s Paris remained an important precedent for the Hungarian capital in many senses, a comprehensive, hierarchical green system plan, such as the Paris example, was not published. Even so, several new public parks were created in the capital, and two major parks, Népliget Park and Gellért Hill, were laid out, as well as several smaller public spaces in the city. The creation of public parks mostly happened together with major city development projects, as their amendments. The green belt around Pest “In terms of planting, we need radical tools if we want to achieve real results. First of all, we need to encircle the whole city with a large planted area according to a comprehensive plan (...), a green belt made of native trees, accustomed to the soil and climate, which would be transformed into bigger parks and promenades at the points of the main boulevards coming out of the city.’’187 A woodland or park belt surrounding Budapest, similar to Vienna’s, appeared regularly in the city development ideas for the Hungarian capital, such as the previously-mentioned plans by Széchenyi, Táncsics or Feszi. Although Feszl’s plan was not chosen in the competition, the Board of Public Works wanted to "encircle Pest with woodland". It had already dealt with this possibility in 1870, and decided to create agreenbelt for “reasons of health, embellishment and well-being”.188 According to the plan, an arc-shaped green belt was projected, starting from Városliget Park, with the same width, leading to the Danube in one direction and to Kerepesi Cemetery in the other. They planned to create suburban residential areas and parks within the green belt. In 1873 the plan was updated, and it was recommended that the planting needed to be done through expropriations in areas where the land was privately owned, and the owners did not agree to plant greenery. No decision was finalised at the time either. Frigyes Podmaniczky envisaged the green belt around the city as a chain of interlinked public parks. As he wrote: “These bigger gardens, which do not need to be luxurious, only with a lot of trees and grass, would be connected by the greenery girdling the whole city, and this greenery - as far as possible - would be continuous, without interruption -which, I believe to be still possible. If the city, with time, were to expand beyond its current border, everything we are talking about would be as useful for those living beyond the boundary of the city as for those who are living and building inside it”189 The linking of Népliget Park to Városliget Park with a tree-lined avenue was an issue in the 1890s, as well.190 The Board of Public Works in 1897 wanted to tackle the problem of the green belt with new regulation plans for the so-called Törökőr-, Ligettelki-, and Fehérúti-dűlő and the meadows at Felsőrákos.191 The grandiose plans by János Bakos, advisor to the minister, recommended a new woodland area at the Ligettelki-dűlő, which was in the ownership of the city, as a first step. The woodland would have served as a large scale recreational facility for the residents of Pest, similar to the woodlands of the hills of Buda. As they argued: “the main thing which Budapest lacks is a large-scale, popular wooded area where exhausted workers could escape from the sun and the sweltering asphalt on Sundays with their families”.192 The new city forest’ would have been twice as big as Városliget Park. Tramlines would have led from each part of the city to the new public park. The area was planned to be divided into four by a 48 yard wide road system. One was supposed to link Previous page: S. Halácsy, Map of the inner quarters of Pest with the regulation lines put down by the Municipal Board of Works, 1873 / HU BFL XV.16.b.221/33 49
