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

Plans for the fagade decoration of the Edelsheim-Gyulai Villa. The sgraffitto was the work of Lajos Rauscher.

Budapest background with its three street faqades, its eighteen front windows, its upper-floor colonnade, and its sculpted faqade decorated, on its upper part, by sgraffitto motifs. Yet it did not exert much influence on the other buildings of Andrássy út. Proprietors having a house built in Budapest showed a strong preference for smaller buildings with a plain room arrangement. Expensive villas were still financially out of reach in the 1870s-80s. (Apartment blocks constituted another category, their rents providing the security required for the loans taken out for their construction.)

The türm of the century - increased

PRETENSIONS, NEW RESIDENTIAL AREAS,

NEW ARCHITECTURAL FORMS

Pretensions started to grow from the nineties on. Most of the villas built ten or fifteen years before underwent extension, some of them repeatedly. Those newly built were much larger and more differentiated. (The Wenin- ger Villa was enlarged in 1901, the Szily Villa in 1895, the Hieronymi Villa in 1887 and 1909.)

The produce dealer Sándor Strasser had a villa built in 1893 (Lendvay utca 24, Zsigmond Quittner - transformed) which presented a completely new look. Its two- storey hall opened on the ground floor into a dining room, a drawing room, a boudoir, a study and a billiard room; the circular gallery on the first floor lead to a guest room, a living room, two nurseries, a nanny’s room, and

21