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

dance with its function as an apartment house, the hotel provided services besides meals as a matter of course.

The building continued in its original function between 1938 and 1943, then at the end of the war it was converted into an orphanage for Jewish children. Later it was used as a hostel for party functionaries and a political education centre. Since 1990 it has operated as a hotel under the name CENTRAL.

Holiday resorts and hotels

The depression of the thirties and the signs of an impending war did little good to the tourism industry of Budapest. The number of foreign visitors to the Hungarian capital dropped off. However, domestic travel and holiday-making, which had been a negligible aspect of the industry, began to increase at a spectacular rate, due to programmes meant to stimulate the economy and tourism. Obliged to forgo travelling abroad, the middle classes sought recreation and a change of environment at home. As the prices of domestic luxury hotels proved no more affordable, these people turned to resort houses.

Sváb Hill and Széchenyi Hill had been popular destinations with Budapest excursion makers as early as the turn of the century, and the hilly region dotted with a growing number of neo-Classical and Romantic villas seemed to offer a suitable site for the building of resort and boarding houses to satisfy a growing demand. Recognising a promising business, the Sváb Hill Association encouraged construction work financed by small investors and private individuals. The freehold property act of the 1930s allowed for the utilisation of newly purchased flats and suites as boarding houses by their future owners.

The Budapest Board of Public Works and the Sváb Hill Association acted jointly to prevent the new construction rush from causing irreparable harm to the area, which was already under official protection at that time.

Only such buildings were authorised as were designed to smoothly blend in with the natural environment. Most of the builders commissioned to construct houses here were Hungarian representatives of the Bauhaus style, architects who had already earned their reputations.

47