Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
ground hidden beneath either the graceful structures of Albert Schickedanz or the more objective edifices built by György Brüggemann. The changing tastes and growing traffic of the new century lead to the removal of these small buildings above the entrances and the wooden paving also had to go. Before World War 1, a few large villas and apartment villas were built to replace the old ones that had been demolished or to fill plots detached from the gardens. A few auxiliary buildings were also raised but it was more frequent to detach those thirds of the plots which overlooked the side streets. The green spots gradually shrank in size, while the proportion of built-in areas expanded. The reputation of the elegant residential quarter also sank as the new bridges across the Danube were built, facilitating traffic from Buda where the well-heeled preferred to have their homes built in the more spacious gardens of the hills there when they moved out from the villas and mansions of Andrássy út. When the living standards of the middle classes began to dive to unprecedented depths, there was no viable demand for the huge apartments along Andrássy út. Beginning during the interwar period, the partitioning of large flats was given a great boost after World War II when severe housing shortages led to the division of the apartments into tiny sub-flats and the destruction of the original interiors. Similar damage was caused by the conversion of several former apartment blocks and mansions into offices. The decay of Andrássy út had less materialistic reasons, too. The Historicist style, which determined the character of Andrássy út — as it did that of the Vienna Ring — was on its way out when Sugárút was built. Amidst the boom of construction activity related to the Millenary Celebrations in 1896, the new Art Nouveau style in its Hungarian version had already made its first appearance in Pest with Ödön Lechner's Museum of Applied Arts. Soon enough, a growing number of people were beginning to discover the shady aspect of Historicism. Among those "exposing the phoniness” of the style was the eminent art historian, Lajos Fülep. "Thankt to the hordei of architecti looted upon the city,” he wrote, "in place of, or at leait betide, the honett Budapeit of old. a nightmare city hat grown up of platter-and-brick apartment blockt potturing at arittocratic Renaittance palacet. where anything and everything from itucco caryatidi to enormout balconiet, comicet and window grämet can be teen with hardly a tingle manihettation a healthy architectural idea — at leait to har. |...] Andráay út. too. wai meant to be an elegant and terene metropolitan avenue proudly advertiting the spirit ol the oht-cited ybl, even at it wai tell-evident that what it can only ever become it nothing more than a row of apartment blockt and would-be thopt. which will iooner or later come into colliiion with itt own 'ttyle'." 64
