Porhászka László: The Danube Promenade - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)
the carved limestone obelisk was topped with a scale model of a twin-engine bomber. Below the model, on the side of the column facing the Danube there was a gilt five- pointed star and lower down the similarly gilt escutcheon of the Soviet Union. The following inscription written in gilded letters was carved into the monument in both Russian and Hungarian: Glory to the liberating Souiet heroes 1945. The designer of this bombastic monument, resting on an overdecorated substructure, is unknown, though the plans were probably made to reflect Soviet conceptions. However, the bill for the obelisk ordered by the commanders of the Red Army was picked up by the Mayor’s Office of Budapest. Life soon restarted among the ruins. Regardless of the proportions of the devastation, reconstruction was begun with incredible energy and enthusiasm. Registered under No. 7.467/1945, Budapest’s Council of Public Works invited tenders for the reouilding of the row of hotels on the Danube embankment as early as December 1945. The directives pointed out that “the aggregate number of rooms before the siege was 633 (with 872 beds). It would be desirable to accommodate as many as 1500 rooms". It was also stipulated that one parking space per every ten rooms was to be made available in underground garages. The tender invitation recommended sinking the tram line below the surface. A binding stipulation was that a four-lane road be designed for the lower embankment. The best known architects of the country participated in the tender competition. Of the seventy-two competitive designs, only one provided for the restoration of the burnt- out hotels to their original form with the only major modification that creator Dr Iván Kotsis suggested flat roofs. A common feature of all other works submitted was that each envisaged a brand new row of modern buildings on the Danube bank. Károly Weichinger planned three, virtually identical, CJ-shaped hotels with flat roofs to the north and another three to the south of Vigadó tér; the cornice of these buildings would have been level with that of the Vigadó, which itself was to be reconstructed. Weichinger designed a broad esplanade for the space in front of the hotel row, with trams running under the surface. Paving similar to the ornamental stone covering of Heroes’ Square would have surrounded the Soviet airmen’s monument. The other designs involved embankment buildings 37
