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

■ No.

122 Andrátty

út — aó it

it now

Sappho from the main front and the female figure (of Echo) putting its ear against a conch, which supposedly alluded to the gossip about the actress. What survive, albeit plastered over regrettably heavily, are the portraits of playwrights and actors decorating the sides and the rear. According to Adolf Ágai, "...the

latéit

addition

to the exiting buildingt it an actren’t holiday home. It it the youthful idea of tewing a huge button on a tiny coat."

Gusztáv Nendtvich,

the expert critic of architecture, gave voice to a similarly devastating opinion: "How pleated I wat when Lechner and Pártot

had

built their block o^ flatt oppotite the Opera Houte for the pention fund of the Hungarian State Railway Company. Here. I thought, wat the town teed that would tprout up everywhere to enrich our capital city with one beautiful building after another. And then it hat tprouted up! But. alat. what hat thut grown out of the ground it the Bulyovtzky Villa, whote every feature announcet that itt

maker

wat not born to cultivate the promiting ityle."

There were, however, some more appreciative reviews, too. M. Erdész,

writ

ing in Fővároti

Lapok (Municipal

News), found the quality of "the water, gas and telegraph connections" as well as the technical equipment and the interior decoration worthy of praise. What that suggests is that the builder expected to have tenants with some sophisticated needs. And indeed, the tenants of the 1890s included the Belgian and the English consuls-general and later Baron Kálmán Kemény, deputy

speaker of the Upper House.

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