Magyar Hírek, 1988 (41. évfolyam, 1-22. szám)
1988-07-22 / 14. szám
Budapest: the birth of a metropolis Considering that the completion of a two-storied building in 1861 was an event that merited general acclamation by the inhabitants or that the first pavement was completed only in 1868, one can imagine the development of Budapest in the past hundred years. The economic opportunities opened by the Ausgleich with the Habsburgs 1867 of caused a population explosion. Only 186,000 people lived here in 1867, but 412,000 by 1883. (And two million today.) The city fathers, architects, builders and building workers of 1900 wished to compete with the historic cities of Europe on their own terms. Town-planning in the twin cities on the Danube went back to Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary, and was prompted by the great fire of 1810 in Buda and the icy flood of 1838, which destroyed or damaged almost half of the houses of Pest. The Palatine set up a Beautifying Committee to work out plans, and that committee changed to a Building Committee in 1857. The most important duty that the town planners were charged with was the creation of a viable and modern city structure, which called first of all for the delienation of the principal thoroughfares and the siting of the Danube bridges. The system that was used all over Europe, for the development of historic cities, that is a structure based on concentric boulevards and avenues starting from the centre, was applied also in Budapest. When it came to the elaboration of concrete plans and a town-planning competition was announced a variety of ideas appeared. Ferenc Reitter, for instance, proposed that a navigable system of canals should be built where the Great Boulevard is now. It would be absolutely unjust to condemn the city fathers of around 1900 of negligence; indeed, their endeavour to do their job at the highest standard of the age with the cooperation of internationally acknowledged architects is still an example that should be followed. Budapest nonetheless is in many respects still a collage of halfcompleted ideas and not completely realised dreams. A prime example of this is Népköztársaság útja (formerly Andrássy út), which now ends at the Small Boulevard instead of at the Danube. Another example are the surrundings of the St Stephen’s Basilica, which are not a suitable setting for the building. A new avenue When the Empress Elisabeth asked Count Gyula Andrássy, the Prime Minister, in 1868 whether there was a thoroughfare to the City Park more pleasant than the narrow and dusty Király utca, Andrássy answered—they say—: “There is none yet, but within five years a splendid avenue will take us there.” If not within five, but within fifteen years the blocks along Sugár út, which was driven through a sea of single-storey houses, were all built, save only two. With its splendid buildings the new thoroughfare became the bourgeois counter-part of the courtiers’ Buda Castle. To make the appearance of the road as harmonic as possible special building regulations were issued to define the precise position of the buildings to be built there, their height and the planting of trees for each of the sections, determined by the Oktogon and the Körönd. Although forty architects designed the buildings, the general appearance of the Sugár út, later Andrássy út, is that of a homogenous work of art. The next phase of Budapest’s history of which citizens of the capital can justly be proud even by international comparison was the building programme for lowincome people hallmarked by the name of Mayor István Bárczy. Under the programme a total of 4,816 small family homes, several hostels, schools and kindergartens were built with the help of foreign credits between 1908 and 1913. The Wekerle-estate built on the fringe of Kispest for employees of the city council, was part of the programme. The general plan of the estate as well as some of its buildings were the works of Károly Kós. Other highlights of the programme were Béla Lajta’s Vas-utca school and the Hungarian Boulevard apartment blocks designed by Béla Málnai and Gyula Haász. Without exception these were pioneering examples of modern architecture. A similar social programme was started in Vienna only later, in the twenties, at the time when home-building activity subsidised by the city council already subsided in Budapest. Bauhaus influence Towards the end of the twenties and in the early thirties, when the post-war economic stress abated and the political atmosphere began to brighten, some elegant and grandiose buildings were built in Budapest. The old timber shop-fronts of the inner city were replaced by completely new facades constructed of pottery, marble and plate-glass. In the Buda green belt new villas designed by former students of the German Bauhaus were built and these together with scores of modern apartment houses built on Köztársaság tér (formerly Tisza Kálmán tér), and on the northern banks of the Danube, heralded the victory of modern architecture. The jazz band of the Dunapark coffee-house in Új- Lipótváros, its plate-glass front that could be lowered below floor-level, and the illuminated fountain of the great park were pregnant with the promise of a new, big-city quality of life, a direct contrast to the Gypsymusic ambience of the Dunakorzó in the inner city. New and grandiose plans were bom also for further development of the city. However, the plan of the monumental Via Antiqua (designed by Aladár and Viktor Olgyay) that was to connect the area of the Aquincum museum with the amphitheatre of Óbuda in a straight line could not be realised, just as the transport connection between Andrássy út and the Chain bridge or the rearrangement of the Buda end of the Petőfi bridge, or the building of Erzsébet Avenue across the sea of houses of Erzsébetváros to connect the present Madách tér with the Grand Boulevard could not. The grandiosity of the latter is still perceptible in the pompous archway of the huge, arcaded red-brick buildings of Madách tér (Gyula Wälder, 1938). The pathetic oeuverture, however, was not followed by anything. The start of the Second World War and the consequent deterioration of the economic situation killed the execution of the promising plans, truly suited to a metropolis, in the embryonic state. Restoration after World Ward The architects of the capital worked out their ideas after the Second World War concerning the restoration of Budapest, which was seriously damaged yet still lucky compared to many other great cities of Europe. Some of these plans even envisaged American-style skyscrapers where the old hotels once stood on the bank of the Danube. It took only a few years, however, to realise that progress had to take a different direction. Nevertheless, the period of 30
