Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
The tower, resting upon a groundplan of 64 square metres and supported by a huge reinforced-concrete slab, is 45 metres high. The gilded knob of the tower top rises five metres above the tower and is 0.8 metres in diameter, without the spikes. The vertical walls of the tower are built of burnt brick, while the sustaining walls and the buttresses, the straight and barrel roofs, the galleries and the cornices are made of reinforced concrete. The first two-metre strip of the facade is covered with stone from Borosjenő. The two-storey building of the parsonage is attached to the right of the church by a hallway; to the left is the young people’s house. The Church of Hungarian Advent in Kelenföld No. 5 Október 23. utca, District XI After World War 1, large-scale housing developments were undertaken in the eleventh district of Budapest. The increasing numbers of Calvinist believers necessitated the formation of a Lágymányos—Kelenföld parish. The parish that thus came into being on 1 January 1926, set for itself the goal of constructing a church. (Services were initially held in schools.) A fund raising campaign was soon in full swing, both at home and abroad. The competition inviting tenders for a complex of a church and two five-storey buildings was won by the Budapest and Vienna trained architect István Medgyaszay (1877—1959). Medgyaszay, formerly also apprenticed to Otto Wagner (1841-1918) a leading figure of the Vienna Secession, combined in his work a vernacular style with modern architectural trends. In 1906 he was awarded a gold medal at the World Exposition of Milan, and in 1913 he won first prize in the design competition for the National Theatre in Budapest. The theatres of Veszprém and Sopron, the building of the Baár-Madas Calvinist Secondary School and several Catholic churches as well as the Kelenföld, the Kenderes and the Püspökladány Calvinist churches testify to his exceptional talent. Placed in the foundation stone of the church were Dutch and Irish coins as well as Hungarian small change. The two five-storey apartment blocks were raised within a year of the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone in September 1928, and in September 1930 the whole of the new Calvinist complex was opened. Construction had been supported with significant donations made by the municipality of Budapest, the Ministry of Public Welfare and the Ministry of Finance. In the middle of this second-degree listed complex there is a singletower church connected to the symmetrically arranged wings by arches of three 60
