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

The Civil Servants' Estate

■ House preserved in its original form on the Zugló postal workers' housing estate

echo of Károly Köss Zoo pavilions, especially the steep roofs, which suggest a Transylvanian effect. These details, together with other features of English Romanticism and continental Art Nouveau, blend into a peculiarly Central European style. The reconstruction jobs carried out in recent years have done no good to the houses in the postal workers’ estate, few of which have survived in their original shape (29, 31,33,36, 40, 42, 50 Gervay utca). Thé only example of careful renovation is the house at number 32, designed by Ervin Nagy.

Several associations, parcelling societies and even banks promoted the construction of civil servants’ housing estates on the outskirts of Pest and Buda between 1908 and 1914, and yet very few of these projects were actually brought to completion. A well-known example of this sort of development from the period is the judges' and attorneys' housing estate. Built on the Eastern slopes of Little Sváb Hill in 1911—12, these 37 villas, society tenement houses and a student dormitory accommodating 80 were designed by Aladár Árkay. The higher demands of the commissioners, who came from the upper echelons of the civil-servant community, are reflected in the design of these villas. Raised on a ground-plan of five rooms on the average, each of these buildings had an individual layout and an originally richly decorated, unique fayade. A detailed description is given in The Villas ofi Budapest, a book by Eszter Gábor published in this series.

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