Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
furniture, such as the Lord's table, the pulpit, the balustrades and the pews, are made of dark-stained elm. Besides the pews seating 394 on the mezzanine, there is a 180-square-metre, U-shaped gallery admitting 280 and another, 82- square-metre one opposite the pulpit on the second floor with a seating capacity of 90. There is sufficient space for a choir of fifty behind the pulpit. In the basement there is a 320-square-metre, 4.6 metre high congregation hall meant to serve cultural purposes. The hall includes a 58-square-metre stage, a cloak-room, a ladies’ and a gentlemen’s dressing room, a toilet and a 70-square- metre lobby, not to mention an air-raid shelter and the boiler room. The building was damaged during the siege with the ceiling caving in and the interior sustaining minor damage. Reconstruction was financed from funds raised by members of the church. The Calvinist Church of Csillaghegy No. 2/b Vörösmarty utca, District III In Csillaghegy, a residential area of detached houses and gardens along the busy highway going out of the centre of Budapest before one reaches the housing estate of Békásmegyer, the church of the local Calvinists can be spotted from afar. The Calvinist worshippers of this area, which started to grow by leaps and bounds after World War I, originally belonged to the parish of nearby Pomáz and held their monthly service at the school of the civil servants' garden city (on today’s Ráby Mátyás út), ln 1925, the leaders of the congregation petitioned the higher authorities of the Calvinist church for permission to become a branch of the Óbuda parish. That their wish was granted, gave a boost to their becoming independent, subject to the congregation having its own church. In the same year the community built a temporary house of worship, which remained in use until the new congregation space in the basement of the new church under construction was opened in 1931. As demonstrated by the research work of László Pusztai, who published the history of the congregation, the first plans for the church, drawn up by the one-time warden Endre Szántay (1869— 1942), date back to 1926. These plans showed a church significantly different in layout as well as external appearance from the building that was actually raised in the construction started in 1931. Szántay, who had a share in the construction of numerous blocks of flats, schools, baths, etc., in the course of his 35-year service in the employ of the municipality, won the tender competition for the church in 1931 and devoted the last years of his active life to the project. 55
