Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)

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THE 1 9TH CENTURY - THE CENTURY OF GREAT CHANGES

Széchenyi Street, the one-time business street of the town

buildings here. On the corner, in the single-storey Mitterhoffer House is the Arany Hordó (“Golden Barrel") Restaurant (commonly called "Füstös” -“Smoky") where on 15 March 1848 a witness tells the customers about the revolutionary events in Pest. Later the now two-storey building is owned by the Tragor family. It is a trading house with lots of "povalyacs" (coming from the Slovak "poválovat"= lounge around) i.e. idlers lazing around it. Ignác Tragor the Older makes a complaint against them at the Town several times claiming that they cause damage to business. There are several banking institutes in Széchenyi Street: Vác and Area Credit Union (number 1), Savings Bank of the Diocese of Vác (number 4), Industry and Trade Credit Bank (number 8), and a great many shops. At the end of the street (in the place of today's biggest food-store in the street) is the Korona (“Crown") Restaurant and Café. Hatvan Gate (one of the gates in the former town wall) used to stand nearby. The Lutheran Church (and in the following century the pastor's house and school) are built here on the edge of the town, at the northern end of the market place in 1866. By this time the Israelite Neology (Reform) Synagogue has already been completed in Romantic style,

[ Lutheran Church

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north of the Lutheran Church, by the designs of Architect Alois Cacciari of Italian origin. In 1890 a sixgrade Neology Elementary Public School is built next to it. The Orthodox Synagogue is also built nearby, at the entrance of the Jewish district (today's Szent István Square) in 1884 (and pulled down in the second half of the 1960s). The Orthodox congregation establish both an elementary and a Talmud School.

Walking on towards the railway station we pass Roch Chapel and the cemetery behind it. (The latter was closed in the second part of the 20th century, and only a cemetery cross set up by Roch Chapel reminds us of the former graveyard today.) Széchenyi Street will not be built up between the Market Place and the railway station until the next century.

Not far from here, beyond the railway lines where the road leading to the Lutheran and the Jewish cemeteries and further on to Gombás begins (today Naszály Road), Sándor Neugebauer buys a building site in 1899 to build the Kobrák Shoe Factory. The craftsmen of the town protest against the foundation of the factory claiming that "with the workers of the plant socialism will be coming to our town". Nevertheless, in 1906 the factory starts operating.

If we continue our walk towards Kisvác, we can pass under the Triumphal Arch erected on the occasion of Maria Theresa's visit. The Theresianum no longer exists; the building houses a military academy between 1808-1825, then it is the barrack of military draymen until the 1850s. In 1855 it is rebuilt to Ferenc Reitter's designs into a prison, and this is when the Neogothic St Virgin Chapel is completed in the middle of the old building. After the late 1890s only the top of its spire can be seen from the Danube

The Synagogue and the Israelite Elementary School |