Juhász Gyula - Szántó András: Hotels - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)
During the siege of Budapest, the building came under artillery fire and sustained severe damage. Even so, in the spring of 1945 the Astoria was among the first to receive hotel guests. That was when the Pengő Club opened in the place of the former night club. It was here that percussionist Gyula Kovács was introduced to the public before he went on to gain world fame. Clntil 1946, members of the CIS military mission lodged here. Later the hotel was adapted to the purposes of receiving international delegations. Several famous personalities stayed here, including Otto Klemperer, who spent a long time in the hotel. The hotel, which has retained its elegance and kept its traditional atmosphere amidst its antique furniture, is often used as a choice location for the shooting of films with stories set at the turn of the century. The Hotel PARK No. 10 Baross tér, district Vili By the turn of the century, the hotels around the city’s railway stations were already in place. The vicinity of the Eastern Station attracted especially large custom, as visitors from the Great Hungarian Plain, the southern regions and Transylvania all arrived here and looked for accommodation in the neighbourhood. Itself called into being in this turn-of-the-century upsurge of hotel founding, the Park did considerable business after World War I. However, this initial boom was not to last, and the hotel was transformed into a share company in the mid-thirties. In the modernization that followed, the establishment was equipped with every convenience that the travellers of the period would expect of a better quality hotel. According to the 1941 almanac, the Park welcomed its guests with 173 rooms, charging less than for example the Palace in Rákóczi út, only one third of the prices at the Hotel Palatínus on Margaret Island. Guests were received in an elegant lobby, there was a study, a gaming room, a café, a restaurant, a terrace, a beer hall, a banqueting hall with room for 160 guests, a quiet interior courtyard, and the rooms were equipped with telephone and wireless sets. To cater for families the hotel employed, according to a newspaper advertisement, a schoolmistress to look after the guests’ children in summer. After World War II, the Park became the hotel of business travellers, while from the sixties on, it put up 36
