Prakfalvi Endre: Architecture of Dictatorship. The Architecture of Budapest between 1945 and 1959 - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

ernment commissioner of architecture) in his assessment of the situation in early 1947: “Whatever has been done so far is unavoidable restoration, although our intention was to rebuild and reconstruct. Here, only preparations have been made.”

It was only by 20 April 1948 that the capital had reached the stage at which the declaration could be made: “there are no more damaged roofs in Budapest!” That feat is commemorated by Margit Kovács's relief (1948) on the wall of the City Hall at No. 9-11 Városháza utca. A contemporary, 1947, account, entitled A Ruin-City is Resurrected, surveyed the work done. The piece reports that epidemics had been averted, the authorities had started roof covering operations, and damage assessment had been carried out, which established that four per cent of all the buildings in the city had completely perished and only twenty-five per cent was left intact. Not counting broken windows and damaged plaster, 210,000 flats survived of a pre-war total of 290,000; 20,000 had been destroyed.

The appearance, on 1 August 1946, of the new national currency, the forint, marked a turning point in the process of reconstruction, enabling as it did the municipal board to make a budget, which provided for a programme of development designed to deal with social, cultural, housing and health-care problems as well as issues related to public education and transport (cf. Marx tér and Kálvin tér).

In 1946, Szabadság (Liberty) Bridge was rebuilt, Margaret Bridge was under construction, buildings were restored to accommodate the Allied Supervisory Committee and so was the mansion at No. 30 Esterházy utca (today No. 8 Pollack Mihály tér) for the president of the republic and his family. In Angyalföld, the Magdolna Town housing project of “barrack-like" terraced apartment buildings containing bedsits (each with one larger room, a living-room-cum- kitchen, a larder, a hall and a WC) abandoned during the war was now resumed in the triangle of streets named Béke, Fiastyúk and Nővér. With two flats on each floor, each three-storey section contained six bedsitters, which shared a laundry and a bathroom per section (at some later point, a shower cubicle was to have been added to each flat). Another housing development started during the war was concluded in Szél utca, Óbuda, where 32 flats were now built (Zoltán Kosa). As reported in the account, the majority of the hospitals had also been restored by 1947, and district XIII was given a new medical centre.

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