Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Converters and substations
Converters, which were in direct connection with consumers, were integrated into the texture of the city. The first inverter-house was built at 21 Kazinczy utca. The original building was reconstructed to plans by Emil Gerstenberg and Károly Arvé in 1934 when a transformer station was added to the existing facilities. The building continued to function as a component of the electric power supply until 1968, and from 1975 it housed a collection of technological history, which was then used as the basis of the Hungarian Museum of Electrical Engineering (founded in 1982 and currently a branch of the Hungarian Museum for Science, Technology and Transport, photo on page 30). The site has had the status of protected historic building since 1987. The Thermal Energy Division of the Electric Power Research Institute Co. is now housed at 47—49 Murányi utca in a building part of which is likely to date back to 1895 with the rest having been raised in the 1930s. On the huge plot of the converter built in 1896 in Weiner Leó (formerly Horn Ede) utca are now two modern apartment blocks. Designed by the Gerstenberg-Arvé duo of architects in 1909, the "Trafó” (transformer, photo on page 35) in Liliom utca is a characteristic work of the industrial Art Nouveau. The building functioned as a converter and transformer house until 1945. In the early nineties the Institut Franpais co-sponsored the invitation of the French anarchist troupe called Resonance to Budapest, who looking for a vacant building for the site of a summer art festival spotted the empty transformer house in Liliom utca. When the building was closed down again after the artist-squatters departure, the Municipality of Budapest purchased the property, and it was here that the legal successor of the Young Artists Club formerly based in Andrássy út reopened — with a ballet choreographed by Yvette Bozsik- on the site in the autumn of 1998 under the name Trafó House of Contemporary Arts. The new establishment came to be the prototype of similar arts centres in Hungary setting up shop in vacated industrial buildings. An open competition of tenders was invited for designs of a transformer house combined with an apartment block to be built on the corner plot at 22 Honvéd utca—9 Markó utca in 1926 (photo on page 37). The first prize was won by Ernő Román, but the 69 designs submitted included one made by Dénes Györgyi, whose plan despite deviations from the stipulated conditions was purchased. Györgyi was jointly commissioned with Román to develop the detailed blueprint. The apartment house of exceedingly modern flats housed shops and an exhibition hall of electric devices on the ground-floor level. The main front featured the allegory of Electricity sculpted by Béla Ohmann. In the basement of the transformer house was the distributing station of District V, while the upper-storey spaces were occupied by the General Banking G Trust Company Ltd. 47
