Ferkai András: Shopfronts - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1996)

The Haas & Czjzek shop with its original sign at 23 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, VI

and cabinets, the desks and the built-in cherry wood chests of drawers, the cornices with their hidden lighting in the high-roofed space containing a gallery were all made in the rounded-off, streamlined modern style typical of the late 1930s.

Of the 1930s shopfronts, only one could resist time and retain its original design till the end of the state socialist era - the frontage of the unpronounceable Haas & Czjzek shop. The shop originally built as a warehouse for the Schlag- genwald porcelain factory moved to its new premises in Vilmos császár út (Emperor William Street), today 23 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, District VI, in 1935. The firm avoided being nationalized and still operated as a limited company at a time when the residents of Budapest had long forgotten the meaning of the abbreviation Ltd. in its title. Being a private enterprise with interests abroad, the company was untouchable. It is owing to this fact that the shopfront and even the shop sign survived until quite recently. The modern row of shopfronts covering the whole ground floor of the apartment block was designed by Károly Barta in 1935 for the Haas & Somogyi Co. The monotony of the wall surface covered with slabs of travertine is broken by two large horizontal shop windows with an entrance between them. The mirror covering of the supporting pillars in the shop windows makes the supports “invisible”. The metal shop sign, written in letters well discernable even at a distance, was placed on the wall above the windows and formed an

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