Buza Péter - Gadányi György: Towering Aspirations - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

1, 3, 5 Teréz körút, district VI

The towers of Schossberger of Tornya mark the end-points of a three-part row of buildings on the first section of Teréz körút between Király utca and today’s Szófia (formerly Kemnitzer) utca. All three buildings were erected to conceptually similar plans by Henrik Schmahl, whose individual art, dominated by the style of Historicism, features a number of Moorish and Indian motifs (e.g. on the fagade of the huge inner-city block known as the Paris Courtyard). Not here though, not yet. it is only the crowded effect of the bulbous dome and the trapezoid roof spire in the background which suggests the later style. Drawn up in 1886, the plans were soon, within a year, followed by completion of the huge apartment mansions.

The owner was Henrik Schossberger of Tornya.

The breakthrough for this family arrived, at least in financial terms, in mid-century. The foundations of its fortune were laid by Vilmos Simon, who was granted a coat- of-arms in 1863, due to his success in the tobacco and spirit trade. Under the management of the brothers Zsig- mond and Henrik Schossberger who had acquired land around the Great Plain town of Tornya and had been raised to the rank of baron, the family business was expanded after 1890 to include wholesale grain trading. The apartment block belonged to the younger son, then his family and eventually the son of Henrik, Henrik von Tornya. However, members of the family are not likely to have ever lived here. The buildings were erected as a strategic investment intended to enhance the family fortune at a time when venture capital was being channelled into the construction of the city. Indeed, this was the time when Budapest was really developed. It included building of the Nagykörút (Great Boulevard), the entire length of its construction taking less than two decades.

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