Buza Péter - Gadányi György: Towering Aspirations - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)
27 Népszínház ütca, district VIII Domes and turrets - at least when it comes to bourgeois houses - these two were the height of fashion pushing all else into the background in the decade and a half before and after the turn of the century. Without them the corner buildings of the period would have in particular struck designer and contractor as strange and unfinished. With this in mind we will not necessarily assume that a building bearing such an ornament is by definition of a high architectural standard. It may easily turn out to be a common, run-of-the-mill, tenement house. As this one is here in the outer Józsefváros district. Designed by Ernő Porzsolt in 1898, the building was commissioned and then owned by the Grauer family, more particularly, Dr Vilmos Grauer and his wife Irén Herzman. By that time the management of the nearby vinegar, spirits and liqueur brewery in Rákóczi út, a venture having been prosperous for decades, had passed from father Miksa to son Vilmos Grauer, the acknowledged practitioner of Pest’s still booming spirits trade. He was the head of the Budapest Spirit and Liqueur Brewers and Traders’ Association and, like his father, a prominent member of the Jewish Congregation. This building is only one of several embodying much of the family fortune. It is a simple tenement block with the landlord living elsewhere. However, it has a strikingly unique feature besides its two, finely shaped towers with their classical contours closing off this twofold corner building on both ends. The real novelty is the original appearance of the main faqade. What the designer did here is that he turned the open-air passageway outward, making it overlook the street instead of shyly hiding this traditional feature of Budapest tenement blocks behind the building itself as was done elsewhere. Admittedly, the sympathetic viewer can regard this feature as a balcony running along the length of the facade on every floor, rather than a common passageway. Let us be sympathetic. 30
