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

27 PODMAMICZKY UTCA, DISTRICT VI

The Baroque dome closed with a Renaissance pinnacle and with its eight dynamic sculptures is a veritable compendium of the stylistic features characterising mature Eclecticism. The designer is Henrik Schmahl.

The commission was given by the rich timber merchant Pál Luczenbacher in the 1880s. The owner’s ancestors had immigrated from Belgium in the 17th century, settling down in Szob and making a fortune in this town on the banks of the Danube, a place which displayed every sign of rapid development in the first decades of the 19th century. The family later established a large-scale timber business in Ferencváros and by 1855 Luczenbacher had as many as eighteen saw-mills in various locations where his men sawed and planed the raw timber, turning it into fuel and construction material. From the sixties on, already in Pál’s time, the family extended its activities to river sailing, and though the profits from this project fell short of expectations, the family retained its control over the ferry service between Pest and Buda, holding on to its fleet of small steamers for many years. The Luczenbachers’ plants also manufactured bricks and the firm ventured into the corn trading business, too. In fact, the family was involved in everything that came into their scope without suffering any significant losses. Financial success soon led to social recognition. Pál Luczenbacher was granted a coat-of-arms and the handle to his name “szobi” (of Szob) by the king in 1878. Soon the sizeable fortune was invested into more than twenty apartment buildings, one of which is on Teréz körút with its large, almost robust, dome at its top.

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