Buza Péter - Gadányi György: Towering Aspirations - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)
14 Fiumei út, district Vili The Schubert-Hikisch duo are not recorded as significant masters in the annals of Budapest’s architectural history. However, that only applies to Armin and Lajos, since Rezső Hikisch, the son of the latter, is in an entirely different category. He was to create something permanent with a number of his apartment blocks and his monument of Queen Elizabeth, a work of art unfortunately destroyed in the war. Nevertheless the firm of Schubert and Hikisch, as well as the two of them individually, worked hard in Pest and Buda as reliable contractors ever since the city's unification in 1873 and would go on doing so for another quarter century or so after that date, following which they retired from business permanently. Unlike their firm. It was this workshop, i.e. the company of Schubert and Hikisch’s successors, that designed, in addition to the Mátyás Mansion on Rákóczi út, the apartment block crowned with some rather striking roof ornaments, which is the corner building standing closest to the cemetery in the former Köztemető (today Fiumei) street. Its plans were designed in 1907 by Gyula Zeuner, who was himself one of the firm’s co-owners. Sándor Kováts, who gave the commission, was also a full partner of the company and himself a master builder. He had lived first in Szív utca and later in Andrássy út, until in 1912 he himself moved permanently out to the peace and quiet of the cemetery neighbourhood, the area where many of his own buildings stood. Thereafter it was his widow who enjoyed the income accrued from the rents to demonstrate as it were how such investments served their purpose by providing those actively involved in such undertakings with an alternative to taking out life and estate insurance policies. Who better than these experts could know what a building like this should be like? The very least was to have was something up there to impress. Dome and gable appear to serve as scenery for each other and the two figures framing the corner gable are also masterstrokes. The marabou storks, these melancholy fairy tale birds standing with their heads hung, can be taken as a subtle allusion to the neighbourhood, but the soft undulation of their heads and backs is also reminiscent of the Art Nouveau forms. 48
