Földes Mária: Ornamentation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
cony, there is a circular aperture, which is repeated on the top floor to serenely “cap” the facade. Our eyes wander to the astonishing, wavy-shaped, vaulted, open veranda, whose protruding top and pillars were made of larch. The facade is relatively unexciting on this side, and the window apertures are simple, so there is time to note the designer’s painstaking attention to detail. The window sills and ledges were made of majolica bricks of a warm toned yellowish brown colour, and hidden in the window corners are the familiar sunflowers. Our eyes wander down the building, and in that way we reach the movingly slender, fan-shaped floral ornamentation covering the spaces between the triple windows. At first we only notice the beautiful forms, and it is only later that the light falling on these motifs makes us realize that this ornamentation, too, is majolica covering, made up of coloured (deep blue, red and yellow) components. As we “walk" our eyes down, sometimes we have the feeling that the delicate balance of the facade is overturned. But Emil Vidor has some uncanny gift with which he restores perfect harmony with a dividing element, with an ornament, or with a projecting roof-section employed in just the right place. That is the impression we are left with, even if the building is in a poor state of repair and the surface covering is missing in many places; and even if the unsightly replacements used (tin plates sticking out instead of shingles) and the peeling plaster are often all too noticeable. But we shall remember the name of Emil Vidor and shall look for the ornaments and facades peculiar to his work. At no. 3 Aulich utca, within a stone’s throw of Honvéd utca, among the several turn-of-the-century houses we can find another building with a unique architectural design, the so-called “Walkó house”, named after its owner. This block of flats, which was completed in 1901, was designed by Albert Kőrössy. We have already met him, or rather his work, on our way. He introduced himself as the builder of stately banks, we saw some airily light shop-fronts of his, and looked at his reservedly elegant apartment blocks, whose style pointed toward modernism. Now we can discover yet another of his many talents. His task was no less than to build, on a strip of land as narrow as that in Honvéd utca, a superior edifice dominating its environment. Kőrössy, however, 40
