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

Mór Fürst had two apartment mansions built at the same time in the neighbourhood of Újépület (New Building), a region under reconstruction at the time. One was in Alkotmány, the other in Báthory utca. Both buildings were erected in the millenary year and the owner, whose particulars other than his name are unidentifiable, sold them almost immediately. The one weighed down by three huge domes in Báthory utca was bought in 1898 by Péter Herzog of Csete, who was later to become a baron (he would only get the title, together with his offspring, in 1904, after joining the ranks of the gentry first). The other, more modest one in Alkotmány utca, decorated with a smaller Baroque turret, was sold to Hugó and Alajos Beck. The two actually lived here. Hugó was a judge, while his brother Alajos sat in parliament. The designer of the building was Bertalan Gaál, an architect from Terézváros who probably had his share in designing the Csete Herzogs’ apartment mansion in Báthory utca, whose blueprints carry a name which cannot be identified.

The Herzog family, like so many other players of Pest’s business life mentioned so far, had gained its fortune in the corn trade. Later on Péter specialised in tobacco, which he traded wholesale in the Balkans and, mainly, in Turkey, but he had flirted with manufacturing too when he established a felt factory in Zsolna and a mill in Nagyvárad. His son Mór Lipót, who would become a prominent member of Pest society as a banker, earned his fame mainly as an enthusiastic and successful art collector. His private collection was one of the richest in the country. A very significant portion of the art works whose return Hungary is demanding from Russia, where they are unlawfully held as the spoils of war, actually belongs to this collection. The owner never in fact lived in this building, even though it could well pass as a palace. The art collection was plundered and taken forcefully from Andrássy út.

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