Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
Although the present appearance of Leopold Town is dominated by the government and financial centres built in the construction bonanza of the decades around 1900, a number of buildings erected at an earlier time are still standing. These include the neo-Renaissance headquarters of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences raised between 1862 and 1864, the monumental St Stephen's Basilica, whose construction lasted for decades from its beginning in 1851, the neo-Gothic Parliament Building erected between 1884 and 1904, and the Hold utca Church of German-speaking Calvinists, which was consecrated in 1878. German-language services had been held in the first, Kálvin tér, Calvinist church of Pest, in use since 1830. However, the growing population of the parish demanded that a separate church be built for its German-speaking members. The Reformed Church diocese of Pest was petitioned on the matter in 1859, and the appeal received the full endorsement of the ecclesiastical council. Among the signatories of the petition were members of the Ganz, the Biberauer (Bodoky), the Hagemacher and the Dreher families. The following years were spent raising funds. Besides subventions granted by the Hungarian government and contributions made by Hungarian individuals, donations arrived from abroad (Switzerland, Germany, England and Sweden). In 1869, the municipality granted the German-speaking congregation a plot of 2600 square yards for the purposes of building a church, a parsonage and a school. The foundation stone was laid in 1870. The Swiss-born architect Lajos Rezső Ray (1845-99) was commissioned with preparing designs for the church. Ray, who had opened an architects’ studio upon arrival in Hungary in 1868 after studies in Zurich and Paris, designed the church in neo-Gothic style. The portal opens, with its order of arches, in the main front on the east and can be accessed by way of a few steps. Above the portal, whose structure protrudes from the wall and is supported by a column on either side, are three elongated windows and two smaller ones; between the latter a rosette can also be found. The choir and the organ are on the gallery above the entrance to this single-nave church terminating in a round apse. The church was completed in 1890, when the two adjoining wings housing the parsonage and the offices of the parish as well as a number of rented flats were also finished. The blocks of flats at No. 15 Alkotmány utca and No. 10 Kálmán utca belonged to the Calvinist Church before their nationalization in the early 1950s; the proceeds of letting them to tenants had been used to finance the Bethesda Hospital and the Bethany Orphanage. During World War II, the church sustained severe damage when most of the rafter roof burnt down. Deprived of its roof, the interior was washed by rainfall 40
