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

decorator Károly Bodon, this elegantly refined establishment soon became a popular gathering place of the Budapest high society. For this, in no small measure, credit was due to the lessee of the restaurant, József Lakatos, who served as Regent Miklós Horthy’s personal chef for ten years. At night, light-music orchestras and jazz bands of a fine reputation would play. Musicians performing here included Kálmán Szabó’s jazz trio, or virtuoso accordion player Mihály Tabányi’s ensemble. After the war, audiences could enjoy the piano music of the popular composer Mihály Eisemann. (Mihály Eisemann’s memorial plaque, next to that of István Zágon, can be seen across the street on the wall of No. 3 Bimbó út, where both of them lived for many years.) The celebrated writer Jenő Heltai, who lived in a neighbouring house, was among the regular patrons of the house. Having weathered the war in comparatively good condition, this famous boarding house of Buda continued to operate well into the late forties.

In accordance with the housing policies of the fifties, the interior spaces of the building were arbitrarily cut up into low-standard apartments, each shared by more than one tenant, and the original function of the construction was entirely forgotten in the meantime. Reconstructed in phases, the group of buildings towers above its environment in terms of architectural quality to this day.

The first apartment-house-cum-hotel on the Pest side (No. 5-7 Munkácsy Mihály utca, district VI) was built on a plot formerly occupied by a school. Inaugurated in 1938, the building was one of the finest works of Alfréd Hajós, the architect who also designed the National Sports Swimming Pool. Representing the Bauhaus style at its most mature, the edifice smoothly blends into its environment, due to the simplicity of the way its mass is structured. The longitudinal fagade, which is rhythmically segmented by balconies, is closed by a corner projection at either end. Thirty-four one-room and eight two- room apartments were created in the building. Each of these contained a built-in wardrobe, a cooking recess and a bathroom. The elegant, spacious and still modern foyer, together with the staircase, is of an exemplary design even by today’s standards. The building had a parlour on every floor. The rooms were served with food prepared in the restaurant’s basement kitchen by way of a butler’s pantry equipped with a dumb waiter. In accor46