Juhász Gyula - Szántó András: Hotels - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

The first hotel-cum-apartment-building in the 1910s Before it stands, as yet, the statue of St. John of Nepomuk

ing at the pension were not even charged any rent at all. An actor who achieved fame in Pest, a well-known writer or an artist did much to raise the profile of the pension that they honoured with their presence. In the mid-twenties, there were as many as thirty-six pensions in the inner-city districts alone; these included the famous modern ATLANTA in Szobi utca, the ANKER, the BELLEVÜE, the DARÁNYI, the DELI, the SPLENDID, the ELITE, the INTIM and the RENAISSANCE.

It was the increasing mobility of middle-class lifestyle which provided the pensions of these years with sufficient custom. The demand for temporary accommodation was not only a function of travel and holiday-making, but also a matter of stark necessity for those looking for a job and a livelihood. In the thirties many buildings that were meant to function as pensions in the first place were already designed. According to the Statistics Almanac of Budapest there were as many as 160 of them in 1944, and twenty-six of these had more than 25 rooms.

The English loan-word boarding house was applied to a characteristic product of the 1920s. (This type of building had become quite wide-spread and popular in America and western Europe by the time.)

In Buda, at the foot of Rózsadomb, at the corner of Keleti Károly utca and Bimbó út stood Count József Mailáth’s neo-Classical house featuring a traditional Hungarian portico with Doric columns. Its huge bushy

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