Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
Harkányi Mansion there are two-flight stairs reaching the owner’s first-floor apartment from the Andrássy út entrance. The rented flats are accessible via a stairwell, lit from two sides. This stairwell divides the interior courtyard and connects the two wings to one another. This positioning of the staircase, a rarity in Budapest, made it possible for the ceilings to be higher in the more elegant Sugárút side wing than they are in the rooms fronting on Révay utca and for a five-storey section to be raised overlooking the side-street behind the three-storey wing on Sugárút. Opening from the smaller courtyard behind the staircase there used to be a stable and a coach house. The first floor of the Sugárút wing was taken up by the owner’s apartment. Behind the six front rooms of this was the three-windowed dining room with its nearly 50-square-metre floor space. The kitchen and its adjuncts were placed on the floor below, the mezzanine of the wing in the larger courtyard. On the upper floor were the flats, consisting of four or five major rooms on the Sugárút front and three or four on the Révay utca side. (The apartments fronting on Sugárút had a room giving on the courtyard each.) The Harkányi Mansion also follows the style of the Roman Cinquecento. Its Sugárút front is more balanced and its sculptural decoration less conspicuous than that of the Saxlehner Mansion. No painted ornaments are known of. What is documented, however, is the fact that the wooden panelling of Frigyes Harkányi's apartment, and within that possibly that of the study, was designed by Géza Györgyi in a style different from the neo-Renaissance look of the exterior. Proprietor Frigyes Harkányi (i 826—-1919) inherited his wealth from his father, a corn dealer. He studied law at the University of Pest, fought in the War of Independence on the Hungarian side, and then continued his studies abroad. Having returned home, he was among the founders of the Buda Savings Bank, the General Hungarian Insurance Company and the Land Mortgage Bank. After the 1867 Compromise with Austria, he was appointed ministerial counsellor in the Ministry of Commerce, was elected an MP in 1870, became a member of the Upper House in 1885 and was created a Baron in 1895. Raised at about the same time in 1882—84, the building on the corner of Dobó utca (No. 12 Andrássy út) had a function similar to the previous two. (The 1200- square-mile plot was purchased by the owner for 150,200 forints in 1882.) More impressive to look at, the mansion stands out from the rest of the street with its more dynamic fafade and rich sculptural decoration. The designs were made by Zsigmond Quittner. The pairs of sculptures at the height of the fourth level represented the bourgeois virtues. (These were, from left to right, loyalty and love, hospitality and prosperity, fellowship and strength, peace and labour). These, together with the well-relief (Elfins) in the courtyard, are the works of Gyula Donáth. (Somewhat earlier, Donáth had contributed to the sculptural '5
