Porhászka László: The Danube Promenade - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

Meanwhile, time did not stand still at Vigadó tér. At the beginning of the century, after a somewhat slack period, the new tenant, theatre director and writer Lajos Ewa managed to boost the Hangli and, attached to it, the Vigadó Café.

The northernmost border of the hotel row was marked by the Grand Hotel Ritz. It was expressly built as a luxury hotel in the place of the defunct Stein House between 1910 and 1913 to plans by Sándor Fellner in neo-Ba- roque, Historicist style. The hotel, opened on 17 January 1913 and furnished with sumptuous elegance, not only impressed with its imposing exterior (the building had five floors like the Hungária), but soon earned international recognition with the high standard of the services it offered. The interior was more than simply rich in a tasteful manner, it was glamorous. Its reading room could have been the pride of any aristocratic palace. While just a few years earlier it was still a technological sensation in the Hungária, the instalment of lifts was a matter-of-fact feature in the Ritz.

No sooner had the construction of the Ritz begun than the competition involved led to the reconstruction of the Grand Hotel Hungária. The management purchased the building at No. 5 Mária Valéria (today Apáczai Csere János) utca for the purposes of operating its laundry, linen storage facilities and maintenance workshop. The main building was thus rid of having to house these essential, but increasingly inconvenient servicing utilities, which took up an increasing amount of floor-space.

The opening of the Ritz completed the hotel row, which was rightly described by Pál Granasztói in his book Budapest arculatai (The Faces of Budapest) as having been “a major attraction of Budapest’s architectural design, an essential element of the overall effect of the cityscape".

In terms of style the hotels on the Danube embankment fitted into the general architectural tendency characterising the major public buildings of the larger cities in Austria- Hungary at the end of the 19th century. These buildings could have been erected in Vienna, Temesvár or Prague, in Lemberg or in Zagreb. And yet the unique qualities of these hotels, especially the Hungária and the Ritz, raised them above the otherwise often high standard of other buildings of a similar nature in the dual monarchy. However, this is not the real reason why they became famous.

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