N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
Water-filled quarries in Quarry Town - the subterranean reservoirs of Kőbánya
The reliability of the prognoses set up by the engineers of the 19th century is borne out by the fact that the mains trunk sewer collects and conducts sewage to the treatment plant to this day. While originally the ledges inside the sewer were only submerged in torrential rainfall, today they are constantly under water; however, they are still passable in Wellington boots. The condition of the sewer is regularly monitored by divers equipped with portable cameras which can detect each flaw, however slight it may be. The well holes and winding stairs hidden inside cylindrical advertisement pillars have become a familiar hallmark of the city. Water-filled quarries in Quarry Town - the subterranean reservoirs of Kőbánya Walking the streets of Kőbánya, District X of today's Budapest, you come across hatches and mysterious air vents. The Sarmatian and neogene limestone of the Neogene period (formed some nine million years ago) can easily be carved and cut and yet it is frost-resistant, which is why it is a well-liked building material. Often the large slabs of stone obtained from the depths of the quarry were brought to the surface via vertical shafts with the help of a pulley block. Kőbánya, the name of the district meaning quarry, refers to the local industry of stone-quarrying practised for centuries but growing to industrial proportions only in the 19th century. It was from Kőbánya that stone was delivered for the construction of such famous buildings as the Protestant church of Kecskemét, the Szabadka church, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the University Library, St. Stephen's Basilica, the Chain Bridge and the Tunnel under Castle Hill. The same stone had been used with the building of the city wall around medieval Pest, too. A report of 1866 records the dispatch of 10,032 cartloads of stone ("3.5 cubic metres of stone equals 3 cartloads"). The cave left behind when the high quality stone was removed was the size of a church and was both dry and easily accessible; no wonder it was appropriated early on by the vintners who had been settled in the region during the Turkish occupation of the country. Wine merchants also stored their merchandise outside the city boundaries, duty-free and in a dry place. (In the underground store room of the Kőbánya Light Metal Works Co. at No. 4 Petrőczy utca, there is a beautiful wine barrel with a carved marble front panel and of such proportions that one can walk inside it.) Later, in the i8oos when beer brewing had gained ground in the country, the cellars came to be used for the fermentation of malt and the storage of beer (by Antal Drehers Brewery Co., the First Hungarian Stock Brewery, etc.). 30
