N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

Water-filled quarries in Quarry Town - the subterranean reservoirs of Kőbánya

■ The Ihász utca reservoir under construction

By i860 the stone in the ceiling of several cellars had deteriorated and begun to crumble and pulverise. In 1861, Vilmos Zsigmondy, the renowned mining engineer (who also determined the spots where the thermal wells on Margaret Island were drilled) was commissioned with assessing the condition of the network of cellars below Kőbánya. Zsigmondy ordered the stowing or the propping up of several mines whether abandoned or still in use.

By the early 1860s the high quality layers had been exhausted and the municipality ordered the closure of the mines. According to a report made in 1913 by the engineering department of the Budapest municipality, a 33-kilometre long cavern with a combined floor surface of 178,000 square metres stretched beneath the district. At that time it was estimated that in an emergency the cavern could admit 890,000 thousand people (although five people per square metre would appear somewhat less than comfortable today).

The 20th century brought a boom to the economy of Kőbánya. More than a hundred factories were established here: pharmaceutical works, a meat processor’s, a large bakery, a canning factory, etc. The first standard-plan workers'

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