Gerle János: Palaces of Money - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

THE LIGHTLY FLOATING CEREMONIAL STAIRCASE WITH THE OPEN CORRIDOR RUNNING AROUND THE ATRIUM

The great reformer Count István Széchenyi lived in the multi-storey wing overlooking the street and the river between 1827 and 1832, a fact commemorated by a marble plaque on the wall of the building.

In 1905 the bank announced a closed competition; the names of those invited are familiar from the competition to build the Austro-Hungarian Bank: Ignác Al- pár, Henrik Schmall, Dezső Hültl, Bálint and Jámbor, László and József Vágó, Kármán and Clllmann, József Hubert and Ernő Schannen. The commission was won by Alpár, and construction started in 1906. However, such a bitter conflict developed between the director representing the bank as supervisor and Alpár that the latter quit the project altogether. He was succeeded by Zsigmond Quittner, who was simultaneously supervising the building of the London-based Gresham insurance company’s Budapest headquarters on a neighbouring plot. Alpár’s floor plan was adhered to, but the interior design was Quittner’s. By 1909 the building’s corner section and the side on József Attila utca had been completed. The wing in Roosevelt tér stretching to Mérleg utca and the bank’s block of flats in that street were completed between 1913 and 1918, this time by Alpár again, because the director had now fallen out with Quittner!

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