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

The head office of CJVATERy completed in 1951

Credit Bank. It was here, outside the bureau for planning and design, a modern, seven-storey construction built to plans by István Nyíri, that Dezső Győry’s statue Young Architects was erected. The three-and-a-half metre, carved limestone work featured two young architects, a man and a woman, holding a theodolite. This socialist realist statue, which was meant to represent the dynamism of reconstruction, was not thematically related to the square, let alone to the virtually non-existent promenade, but reflected the function of the CJVATERV headquarters.

The events of the 1956 revolution did not cause any harm to the Danube promenade, which was now “lined" by only two buildings, the war-damaged Hotel Duna and the Thonet Court. Only the Monument to Soviet Airmen was deprived of its ostentatious decorations.

After 1956 the obelisk was restored, now in a more modest form (without the aeroplane). In 1957 the square itself got back its original name, becoming once again Vigadó tér. Not long after, Dezső Győry's Young architects was pulled down. It later reappeared in the provincial town of Békéscsaba around 1970.

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