Veszter Gábor: Villas in Budapest. From the compromise of 1867 to the beginning of World War II - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)

to be a summer house; the particularity of this tripartite building (transformed beyond recognition at the beginning of this century) resided in the impressive size of its smg/e-arched loggia linking ground and first floor.

Summer residences on the outskirts of a city were mainly built in order to satisfy the needs of the upper middle class. Aristocracy was not bound to the city, where they only moved in for the “winter season”, having spent the summer and the hunting season on their domains.

Indeed, aristocratic families were able to preserve their privacy even in their urban mansions; by contrast, middle-class families moved to apartment blocks, which gradually increased in size from the beginning of the 18th, but more generally during the 19th century. (The four-storey apartment building became a really characteristic feature of Pest’s streets after a flood had devastated most of the city in 1838). Land prices having steadily risen during the second half of the century, this form of housing became almost general. The apartment blocks on the Ring in Vienna, the Graben (Na Pfikope) of Prague and the Great Boulevard in Budapest were meant to accommodate the more wealthy families, while those disposing of a comparatively modest income had to content themselves with more remote streets. Although these flats were very varied as far as size and standard were concerned, their common feature was that they did not allow a high degree of privacy.

The longing for privacy was probably the main factor leading to the development of a new type of characteristic middle-class urban villa. The burgher of the middle ages and early modern times still dwelt and earned his living within his own walls. His house included his workshop and store rooms; he transacted business and slept under the same roof. One consequence of the advent of the industrial era was the segregation of home and workplace, not only for the working class, but also for the higher social strata. (The appearance of apartment blocks was directly linked to this phenomenon). The detached family house offered the ideal solution for middle-class families unable to adapt to living in an apartment building.

The middle-class detached house, comprising a few rooms, a kitchen and a larder, and totally devoid of all luxury was without doubt the predecessor of the middle11