Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Margert Island with its extra stairs
The venue of the 2006 European Aquatics Championships was completed after years of wrangling with the extension of the Hajós Alfréd swimming pool by the official name of Hajós Alfréd—Széchy Tamás Sports Swimming Pool. Of its peculiar architectural features, special mention is to be made of the eight-flight stairs rising up high by the glass windshield. Stations - steps - trains As hubs of Hungary's railway network, Budapest's central stations played a crucial part in the life of the unified capital. Beside river-boat shipping, which was a still- significant means of goods transfer at the time of unification, passenger and goods transit arrived in Budapest mostly on rails. These buildings were thus gates open to Hungary's provinces and the country's foreign neighbours, a fact reflected in their appearance too. Even their names indicated the orientation of each (even though no Northern Station was built; what is more, the Southern Station, opened in 1861, was named after the South Railway Company operating the station). The Southern Station then and now The main railway station of Buda received its present-day name in 1873. At the time it was built its location was a highly controversial issue: influential corn merchants would have wanted it to be located somewhere near the Danube for easy goods handling, while residents of the increasingly fashionable Christina Town, a neighbourhood growing in size around the Buda Tunnel, wanted to have the station built as far away from residential areas as possible. Some would even have suggested that the Western Station be connected to the Southern Station via a railway bridge that was to have been built in the place of today's Margaret Bridge. Eventually those in favour of a location near Tábormező (next to what is Vérmező today) carried the day. The central geographical position of the station followed from the presence of the rails emerging from the tunnel beneath Gellért Hill Minor (built in i860, and the significant difference between the elevation of the tracks in the goods yard above sea level and that of the immediate environment (of Vérmező and Ördögárok). The station building itself comprised a large wooden hall with four tracks inside it. The departure wing was placed nearest Vérmező with the arrivals being put on the Alkotás utca side. The drawings, which represented a somewhat outdated conception by the time the building was completed, were made by Wilhelm Flattich. The arrivals 42
