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

and should not be considered as decorative plastic works, even though their formal symmetry and the similarity of their size clearly indicated their being destined to play a complementary role. The edge of the pool was augmented by the bronze figure of a girl, an independent work by Imre Csikász, while six high reliefs by Fülöp Ö. Beck could be seen on the peristyle surrounding the quadrangle. The faqades of the two buildings were rather unusual. The street faqade of the smaller house as well as the portal were coated with limestone ashlar, while the walls of the main building were covered with bricks and framed, similarly to the windows, by yellow-white glazed ceramic ware. The scraggy surface of the basement reaching up to the railing of the terrace was tiled with green Zsolnay ceramics, while the colonnade of the quadrangle was panelled with dull white ceramic tiles.

The luxuriance of the Schiffer and Grünwald Villas, and especially their value from the point of view of fine arts, put them well above the usual standard of villas built in Budapest, and were an example of the standing reached in the years preceding the Great War by members of the middle class interested in fine arts who were both willing and able to support them.

After World War I

The effects of the collapse following the First World War and the dismemberment of Hungary’s territory were also noticeable in the architectural life of the capital. The aristocrats, having lost most of their landed property, were no longer in a position to maintain their mansions in town. The Hunyadi Mansion in Trefort utca was sold to the insurance company OTI and turned into a dispensary shortly after the war. The fate of the Csekonics Mansion in Kecskeméti utca (partly destroyed during World War II and replaced by the KÖZTI planning office) was very similar. The Italian Institute moved into Alajos Károlyi’s mansion in Esterházy utca (today Pollák Mihály tér), and the Baross Association took over the Káro- lyi-Csekonics Mansion in Múzeum utca. The city council bought mansions for its cultural institutions; the realisation of new buildings planned before the war for the City Library was cancelled, and the Wenckheim Mansion in Baross utca was bought to house the library instead, while the Károlyi Mansion in Egyetem (Károlyi Mihály)

37