A Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár évkönyve 28. 2001 (Debrecen, 2001)
Tanulmányok - Papp József: A debreceni Sétakert
206 Papp József: A debreceni Sétakert. THE SÉTAKERT (WALKING GARDEN) OF DEBRECEN József Papp The Nagyerdő (Great Forest) played a very significant role in the medieval and modern history of Debrecen. Its public opening was prohibited for a long time by local rules. The increasing demand for a place of resting and entertainment was eventually embraced in the late 18th century by the royal commissioner ordered in the town. He urged the establishment of a spa and place of entertainment in the part of the fenced up Nagyerdő closer to the town. The spa building of Nagyerdő (today called “Régi Vigadó”) was completed in the 1820s. In the almost desert-like area between the town centre and the entertainment area of growing popularity a straight “public promenade” was staked out in the place of the dirt road. On either side of the promenade plots of some 100 metres depth each were offered for sale to the well-off citizens as orchards, horticultural or vegetable gardens, or the construction of summer homes. By 1843, 41 plots had been sold in the Sétakert, the most recent part of the town. In 1863, an omnimus was travelling on its main street, which had no side streets. It was paved in 1867, and in 1884 Hungary’s first machine traction public road railway was travelling on the gas-lit streets. Simonyi Street, as it was later called, became an inner-city area by the end of the 19th century and was the scene of public festivals. In 1901, the predecessor of today’s Carnival of Flowers was held here by the Women’s Charitable Association. This “cherry festival”, the forerunner of the Carnival of Flowers, was supported by the city as its own from 1905, when the city’s chariot decorated with flowers was also sent as part of the procession. In the Sétakert area, in the new streets opened in the 1930s, as well as in the back parts of the old plots, well-off citizens were still constructing their homes in this period. The first villas appeared in the Simonyi Street side of the ornamental gardens in the second half of the 20,h century.
