Ferkai András: Housing Estates - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

The Civil Servants' Estate

■ Kálmán Hindy ’s home on the Civil Servantó' Cótate (21 Delej u. D VIII, látván Nagy, 1887)

Ceo JÍvrulij 3 Idt (/tn*tn.

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was the first successful drive in Budapest aimed at the construction of tenant- owned homes in any large numbers. Several building societies were formed around 1870, none of which got to the stage of actually building anything, however. The "Civil Servants’ Building Society", an association founded in 1883, owed its success to good fortune. It was formed by the clerical employees of the Hungarian Post in order to obtain cheap loans and construction plots, and provide its members with houses with gardens. The three-hundred-strong founding membership was largely made up of civil servants living in Budapest and working mainly as judges, teachers, telegraph operators and postal clerks for the government, the municipality or the county. They found their task to be a tougher challenge than expected, as it was by no means easy to obtain either reasonably-priced loans or suitable plots. It was after a long period of exploration that they eventually found a group of plots owned by the city beyond the Üllői út-Tollgate to the left of the Orczy Gardens. What made the area an attractive proposition was certainly not the scenery-a bleak cityscape of hospitals, army barracks, factories and vegetable gardens-but the fact that it was vacant and affordable. The Society had to deploy all available stratagems from enlisting influential friends to making an appeal to the public through the press, because the idea of Budapest giving up a significant part of its property to private owners was very strongly opposed. Others, including Deputy Mayor Károly Gerlóczy, recognised that the civil servants' request was rea11