Földes Mária: Ornamentation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
facade, decorating the railing of the balconies as well as on the brackets supporting them and on the garland bordering the field with the initials and the coat of arms. All this is completed by the flower plot built between the window casings, with the light, slender, and S-shaped figures of girls standing in it. The composition, which betrays a genuine sculptor, is repeated four times on the frieze, running along the width of the building. The sculptor was Géza Maróti, the most often employed decorative sculptor of the period, who later also successfully demonstrated his talents abroad. He had a predilection for this kind of frieze with repeated pattern, which he used often and with relish on buildings erected in the period (e.g. the “Detoma house” in Bartók Béla út). The more discerning builders of the period as well as their clients employed well-known and talented sculptors even with the construction of private houses and villas built on a more modest budget. Here, as in the case of large-scale investment, high quality and painstaking execution were the norm. Walking into Váci utca and then past the uniform glitter of the shop windows, we can discover the first remarkable facade on our left. No. 15 was built in 1900-1901. Its designer was noticeably influenced by the “Thonet house” in Váci utca built some ten years earlier. Its facade is articulated in a similar manner, and the residential storey is also marked off from the shop level with covering materials of different colours. The shop windows and portals on the ground floor are covered with deep-tinted wooden panelling adorned with floral and meander carving, and, in the middle of the entry level, with a majestic winged lion. The front of the residential level is covered with simple, white glazed bricks, with the sole decoration of a painted Gothic sculpture in the figure of a knight standing beneath a baldachin. The tulip motif used as a decorative feature on the sections below reappears under the cornice in coloured glazed majolica. If we have time, it is worth entering the staircase. The lift shaft has a fine wrought iron casing, and the superb carving on the wooden panels covering the wide, first-floor entrance to the apartment can still be seen in its original beauty. Stepping out through the gate and looking left we can see the country’s crowned coat-of-arms and the 16
