Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
square would indeed be renamed, albeit not for anything directly patriotic. It was called Mussolini Square and November 7th Square before it got back its original name.) "What can already be said ló that thia octagon looked bar more impressive on paper and made oh plaster than it does now on the ground made oh red-brick. The apparently impossible heat oh narrowing something down while broadening it out was achieved by its makers. A very wide street was here turned into a very narrow square. What is missing is lateral development. What one sees is the Junction oh hour streets oh negligible width: these are separated by hour blocks oh buildings, none oh which has a satishactory hapade or a suhhicient depth so that their mass could act as a counterweight to the hour large gaps opening up where the streets blow into the square. The octagon is thus no more than a tetragon, an octagonal square indeed, with hour oh its sides made oh air and thus existing in the imagination only. What is missing is not only the sides which could hlank the square but the square, too. that such masses could blank. True, the buildings to blank the hour broad streets reaching the square will one day be built, and thus the hour buildings bordering it will lose their strikingly screen-like appearance, but a decent public square will never be harmed here. We had better give up any hopes bor a bountain, a memorial column, a marble statue or any other illusion, as the middle oh the octagon. required bor the very dihberent purposes oh trabbic. would only be blocked by any such vanity.” Hevesi was subsequently proved right as the scenery-like appearance of the buildings in the square has in fact been eliminated with the construction of the Great Boulevard, but the Oktogon has never become a real square. It has remained what it always was — a crossroads. Hevesi's warning has been taken seriously as neither fountain nor column has been erected in the middle. The only alteration that has been made is that the original brick facades of the buildings have been plastered over and the straight walkways leading to the promenades were eliminated in the mid-fifties. The street islands have been planted with greenery and the pedestrians have been banished to those four sides made of air and existing in the imagination only. "The buildings in the octagon have one thing in common with the Seven Houses' — they are hard to be told apart. The pairs ob buildings bacing each other in a transverse direction are bully identical, even though there are some minor dibberences oh detail. It seems all the nursery-school children oh Budapest will be taken to the Oktogon in a hew years, because by working out these minute dibberences their supple little minds will gain much needbut exercise and thus achieve spectacular progress according to FröbeTs system." 30
