Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
The new owner was the son of a wealthy father himself, whose public activities included membership in parliament in 1882-92. Although the flats are not uniform here either, there were no essential differences between them. On the first and second floors there were luxury flats with seven rooms each, the more representative ones fronting onto Sugárút, the less impressive ones giving on the courtyard. Apartments were more modest on the third floor where there have always been two flats, one featuring four, the other three front rooms. There was little difference between the internal clearance of the flats as ceilings were at a height of 4.40 metres on the first, 4.42 on the second and 3.85 on the third floor. What these heights suggest is underlined by the number of rooms: the first and second floors were virtually equal in status, whereas the third was of lesser importance. Unlike elsewhere in Budapest, it is not the first but the second floor that is of prime significance, deserving the accolade of 'piano nobile ’. In the apartment mansions and blocks of flats of the 19th century, as in mansions built in earlier times, one of the floors is accentuated with richer decorations and larger window-frames. Behind these were no longer ceremonial halls, but the most carefully appointed flats usually designed for the proprietor. The triangular tympana above the windows of No. 11 Andrássy út are crowned with reclining figures, which are not cast bronze ornaments as those on the Saxlehner Mansion, but are made of rolled zinc painted over (originally) to imitate the surface of stone. And they are not unique pieces either, but serial reproductions. The attentive observer will note that some of the figures are repeated. In the following blocks were housed two prestigious publishing houses and booksellers. The Singer and Wolfner Literary Institute Co. had its offices in 1885—1912 at No. 10, from where it moved to No. 16, where it operated as the New Era Literary Institute Co. (Singer and Wolfner) from 1943 onwards. The business was later taken over by a branch of the State Booksellers Company supplying libraries, itself to be later superseded by the Gyula Illyés Bookshop. The premises are now occupied by a luxury stationer's selling musical fountain pens. Across the street at No. 21, from 1888 to 1934 there was a bookshop owned by Róbert Lampert (F. Wodianer and Sons), adding to the prestige of the neighbourhood with its elegance and imposing proportions. Later the Czechoslovak Cultural Institute operated a book and music shop on the premises, which are now used by furniture retailers. The row of mansions and apartment blocks was broken, after the first eleven or twelve buildings, by the former Hermina tér, a square hardly noticeable at all today. This is where the finest building of Andrássy út, the Opera House designed by Miklós Ybl, stands, opposite the early masterwork of architect Ödön Lechner, an apartment block once owned by the pension fund of the Hungarian State Railway Company. '7
