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

are separated by heavy velvet curtains, very appropriate for the coffee house atmosphere. The carefully reconstructed bronze lamps and re-cast brackets have been put back onto the facade and the doors have regained their original handles and fittings. Beyond Gerbeaud’s reborn external grandeur one finds the original furnishings inside, though the interior design varies in style and ambience from one room to the other. The elegant Gerbeaud, always popular with tourists, is situated at the end of Váci utca, that equally popular pedestrian precinct in the city centre and it is indeed a stylish location to serve as the destination of a leisurely walk in the area.

Gábor Gereben’s success with Gerbeaud generated more commissions for shopfronts. He restored a bookshop and “Népművészeti bolt” (Folk Art Shop), both located in Váci utca. The reconstruction of these fronts became urgent when this important city-centre street was pedestrianised. The wooden frontage of a funeral company once operating in the building was used as a model for the front of “Stúdium könyvesbolt” (“Stúdium” Bookshop) at 22 Váci utca. Apart from making the arched gable between the two lamps as wide as the building, Gereben copied every detail of the shop’s prototype - with the obvious exception of the rather morbid (even for an undertaker) vultures which used to perch on the spheres topping the lamps.

Both the location and design of “Népművészeti bolt” (the Folk Art Shop at 14 Váci utca) are more interesting. The late Art Nouveau building was constructed to plans by

Folk Art Shop at 14 Váci ütca, V

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