Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Budapest in the Inter-War Period (1919-1945)
were all built about this time. In 1927 the IBUSZ Travel Bureau was set up, which still is the central organ of tourism. The new buildings included the Radiological Hospital in Bakáts tér, the Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and the hospitals in Péterffy Sándor utca and Kútvölgyi út. Other contributions to the amenities and progress of the city between 1920 and 1940 were the Free Port of Csepel, the city markets, the Millenary Sports ground, the Sports Hall, the artificial skating rink in the City Park, the open-air stage on Margaret Island, and the statues of Kossuth and Rákóczi placed in front of the Parliament. Even if failing to keep up with demands, public utilities and transport communications were nonetheless further developed. The number of passengers carried by the municipal transport enterprises, for instance, increased by a hundred million in twenty years. But the price of a tramway transfer ticket was close to the hour’s earnings of a skilled worker, and tickets on the buses, introduced between 1925 and 1930, were even more expensive. The cog-wheel railway was electrified in 1929 and a trolley-busline in Óbuda started in 1933. The connection between Pest and Buda was improved by the construction of the bridge at Boráros Square (it was named after Miklós Horthy, and is called Petőfi Bridge today). In 1928 the first traffic lights were introduced. Civil aviation services also began in the inter-war period, first at the Mátyásföld Aerodrome, later at Budaörs, and finally the city bought Ferihegy for a civil aerodrome, which, however, was not finished before the Second World War. The municipal united transport enterprise was begun in January 1923, and was called BSZKRT(Budapest Capital CityTransport Ltd.). In 1928, about one year after the introduction of the stable currency the pengő, and four years after the foundation of the Hungarian National Bank, the Municipal Savings Bank of Budapest was set up. In 1927 the municipality bought the Wenckheim Palace, which was turned into the Municipal (today Ervin Szabó) Library. In the following year the Károlyi Palace was bought for the purpose of installing a museum and picture gallery (today it houses the Petőfi Literary Museum). The shortcomings and omissions of everyday life in a metropolis of one million inhabitants, often due to the failures of municipal government, were regularly brought up in the questions put by the opposition in the Municipal General Assembly. They denounced the “chronic” failures in the water-supply; the irregular, unsystematic and therefore extremely expensive road repairs; the overcrowding in trams and buses; the high cost of public transport, in which Budapest was in advance of the other great capitals in Europe; they demanded that the tram time-tables should be adjusted to fit the opening hours of factories; and—as early as 1927—that resolute measures should be taken against factories dangerously polluting the atmosphere; that noise abatement regulations should be enforced, that the roaring of radios and loudspeakers, the noise of cars and motor bicycles as well as the blaring of horns prohibited; that the children should be permitted to “move freely”, i.e. to play in the city parks, that an underground railway should be constructed under the Great Boulevard and the trams on the surface abolished. The buildings of the past and the inter-war period mingled in a diversity that gave Budapest much of its charm. It was this that made Budapest the “other home” of all Hungarians. The old Royal Palace, the noble buildings of the Ministries surrounding it and the splendid aristocratic palaces gave the Castle district its distinctive flavour. Upon the Rózsadomb 52
