Buza Péter: Bridges of the Danube - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

The pleasing play of the contours and arcs

OF THE STEEL STRUCTURE

such grandiose ideas as a 60-metre tall, ornamented lookout tower in the middle of the bridge or a pantheon of statues symbolizing the Hungarian counties. The committee members consistently dropped all such ambitious plans.

The statues were carved in the studio of Thabard in Paris from the drawings of Wilbrod Chabrol. They contribute to the style of the bridge without suppressing the basic form of the structure. The lights remind one of the Place de la Concorde. The abutments and piers ornamented with griffins set a modest, perhaps overly modest, frame around the functional iron skeleton. Newspapers poked fun at the ornamental plaque presenting the details of the construction, which was placed on the middle pier at a location that could be seen neither from the water nor from the banks. The plaque was derided as “a windowframe taken out of a Paris apartment

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