Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

■ The

Saxlehner Mansion (No. 3 AndráMy

út)

forints for the plot. The new proprietor then proceeded to commission Győző

Czigler, a professor at Budapest’s Technical University, to design a four-storey apartment block for the plot. With the purchase effected in the spring of 1883, the designs were approved in February 1884, the permit of occupancy being issued in August 1885. (It is safe to assume that the building had been completed on at least the outside by the time the avenue was ceremonially opened.) The first floor was occupied by Saxlehner's own apartment. Five rooms gave on the Sugárút,

while

the huge dining room and a back room opened on the courtyard. Another three rooms belonged to the apartment, their windows overlooking Two Saracens' Street. Also in the side wing were the offices of the Saxlehner Company. The apartment itself had spacious rooms. The three-window dining room had a floor space of 47 square metres, the two street-side middle rooms, whose proportions were somewhat different, covered fifty square metres each, and even the ante-room occupied more than 38 square metres. The first floor had an interior height of 5, the second 4.3, but the third only 4 metres. Needless to say, the upper-floor flats were of more modest proportions, even if they were by no means small. There were two flats on each floor of the Sugárút

front

with two and three street-side rooms respectively, each flat containing a back room overlooking the courtyard. The Two Saracens' Street side featured three-room flats on each floor, where all the rooms were on the street front. Each flat was equipped with a bathroom.

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