Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)
What did signify a turning point in the life of the island was when it was made accessible on foot in 1900. Before that date, there was no direct connection between the island and the mainland, a situation unaltered by the opening of the Margaret Bridge in 1876, as no driveway branched off the bridge to the island. For that the ownership of an islet towards the Buda side had to be transferred to Archduke Joseph, who then had the alluvial bank connected to Margaret Island by filling up the gap separating the two. This was done in the last years of the nineteenth century when the city gave the islet to the Archduke as a gift (in return for that Joseph donated an insignificant sum to the municipality to be used for charitable purposes). Following that and in accordance with the contract between Hungary’s government and the proprietor of Margaret Island, the building of a driveway branching off Margaret Bridge was begun in the summer of 1899. The construction of the link bridge cost a total of 680,000 korona (to which the Archduke contributed 400,000). The embankment and flood-protection works carried out at the time added some 35 acres to the island’s surface area. The ceremonial opening of the link bridge was held on 20 August 1900. According to a contemporary description of the medicinal baths published in 1909, some 1100-1200 guests spent a shorter or longer period in one or another of the accommodation facilities of the island, where the number of day guests was in excess of 100,000 per annum in the first decade of the twentieth century. And that at a time when neither today’s lido bath nor the swimming pool had yet been built, which now attract tens of thousands of visitors on a summer day to Margaret Island. The Island in the Twentieth Century As of 20 August 1900, Margaret Island could then be reached on foot, something that many in fact did, despite the fact that those stepping on the soil of the island were obliged to pay an entrance fee at the end of the link bridge. (In 1919, under the reign of the Republic of Soviets, the 30
