Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

Originally designed to have two towers, the church has but a single belfry rising to 56 metres upon a quadrangular ground-plan of 8 x 8 metres. To help erect the quadrangular structure, the National Beatification Committee lent the builders an elevating mechanism. The bell carriage was donated by Prince Antal Grassalkovich in 1831. The first bell was bought from funds contributed by Fridolin Aebly, a Swiss supporter of the congregation. The bells, cast by Henrik Eberhard from Turkish cannons (weighing 0.21, 0.12 and 0.065 tonnes), were first sounded in 1833. Two of the bells were later put to military use in the war, and the present-day bell was cast from the material of Eberhard’s single surviving bell by Lajos Gombos in 1980. The clock in the tower has told the time for more than 160 years. The cap received its present-day shape, designed by János Buchlok, in 1859; this was also when the original shingles were replaced by today’s copper cap.

From 1910 on, several plans for the development of the area tried to provide for the alteration or relocation of the building. The church itself drew up a monumental plan to add aisles to the structure and to erect a five to seven storey complex around the core building. The writer Zsigmond Móricz also took a serious interest in creating a Calvin Castle. He intended to devote his last, as it happened unfinished, novel to that topic, and had in fact started to accumulate material for the project.

Towards the end of World War II Budapest was devastated by aerial bombardment and artillery shelling. The worst hit part of the building was its roof, but a shell also damaged one side of the tower. Thanks to donations made and loans given by the congregation, a major reconstruction job was finished by 1947. Between 1967 and 1969, the National Inspectorate of Monuments carried out a full-scale renovation and the church was restored to its original condition. The smooth plaster coating applied in 1926 was stripped off and the ashlar- patterned fagade originally designed by Hild is once again in place.

The Hold utca Church of German-speaking Calvinists

No. 15 Alkotmány utca, District V

The district emerging at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries north of the town wall of Pest was named after Leopold II in 1790. In the second half of the 19th century, the city rapidly expanded in a northerly direction. Development of the area was accelerated by the construction, between 1872 and 1876, of Budapest's second bridge, Margaret Bridge, to designs by Ernest Gouin and his associates.

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