Kiss Katalin: Industrial Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
T he Liva Mill XV, Rákospalota (by the Szilas Brook, near Fóti út) This neglected and barely accessible building stands by the Szilas Brook. Sleepy and curious faces greet our arrival-it has become a hang out for homeless people. Yet these homeless folk have probably preserved the building from final devastation, its roof from being burned down and its walls from being carried away brick by brick. Albeit if in ruins, the building clearly shows the forms of a former water mill, indeed the last remaining within the boundaries of the capital. According to some experts, it was built during the Turkish occupation, but this could be proved only following archeological research. In the early 19th century it was already there, then it stood empty for a long time. At the end of the century it was reconstructed, and it is in this form that we can see it today. No contemporary plans have survived, and we know only some fragments of its history, based on property registers. An important period in its life was when in 1896 the local council of Rákospalota (at that time an independent village) bought the rights of the mill and other feudal estates, and sold it to József Liva, with the condition that he build a steam mill and a bath here and keep them working for at least 25 years. Liva was a professional millwright, and he developed several sites here. At the side of the old mill he built a new engine house with modern equipment. The reception basin also served as a bath. One of the pavilions of the 1896 Millenary Expo in Budapest was bought for the cash- desk and changing room. The mill functioned for a while even after the Second World War, but shortly after nationalization in 1948 it stopped working. However, for many years its original equipment survived. In 1906 there were 17,304 mills in Hungary, among them 2569 steam and engine mills. Even the lesser mills worked with rather modern equipment, and a great part of them were modernized shortly before the Second World War. There are few Hungarian families who do not have at least one miller among their 59
