Armuth Miklós - Lőrinczi Zsuzsa (szerk.): A Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem Történeti Campusa (Budapest, 2023)
A Központi épület - The Central Building Zsembery Ákos
1 1 8 o m Havel reported the works he had been contracted for as finished on June 1st, 1909, but we do not know when the building was ready: the last entry of the construction journal dates from November 14-th, 1909, when the garden designed by Armin Pecz was completed and a remark was also made about the delay of the furniture delivery. After the inauguration of the building, however, new construction works started. In 1913-1914 the four courtyards of the main building towards the Danube received a glass roof. In the two courtyards next to the Grand Courtyard roofed museum rooms were furnished in 1913. The southern and northern courtyards received glass roofs in 1914. In the southern one a drawing-room, in the northern one a hydraulic engineering laboratory was furnished. Hauszmann, who planned to build in the four courtyards, loaded the main trusses of the new roof structures on the existing facade walls and made sure to keep enough distance between the corridor windows and the walls defining the new rooms so as to guarantee natural light on the corridors of the lower ground floor just like before. In 1938 a small building was designed in the courtyard towards the Library as a structure adhering to the stairwell (on the site of today's Auditorium Maximum) for the purposes of the university rowing club. We have no data available which would prove whether it was actually realized. We know of its building permit drawings and it is also included in a drawing of the basement without a date, but surely made before World War II. It may have functioned till 1943, when the courtyard was built in for the first time. Surviving drawings prove that a 9x8 metre reverse-current pool was operated here by the sports club with a mechanism to support model ships. By the late 1930s the increasing number of students and the progress of scientific and educational advances required more room again. This was to be solved by adding a new storey to the existing Central Building. However, Iván Kotsis was dissatisfied with this solution, and reviving his former concept of 1919 he insisted on the construction of a new pavilion for the Faculty of Architecture on the Campus. The management of the university finally preferred to construct the additional storey. Plans were made by Professor Pál Csonka, and construction was scheduled
