Szablyár Péter: Sky-high - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2007)

Office Blocks and Public Buildings

The contractors were Géza Bogdánffy and Miklós Cséry. Budapest's first skyscraper was completed by 1931; with its red clinker fagade, large reliefs, sculptural decoration, huge clock and Art Nouveau ornamentation, the building became a familiar landmark.

The first eight storeys of the tower block contained offices, while the remaining eight housed fire and burglar-proof storage rooms for the safekeeping of the insurance policies and the institute's own archives. The tower block also contained a reinforced-concrete stairwell, a passenger and a files lift as well as a paternoster.

The two-storey tall sculptures on the four corners of the tower-top were made by Béla Seenger.

To speed up construction, the contractors employed quick-setting bauxite- cement, a new material of the period. By the 1960s it had come to light, though, that bauxite-cement can lose solidity and begin to crumble if applied with an inappropriate technology. The first such problems were registered in 1966, and then in a few years, in 1969, the demolition of the upper storeys was ordered down to the level of the main cornice. The lower sections were reinforced. Gone with the tower was the Art Nouveau decoration, which is why the truncated and

The enlarged building (photo by Tivadar Kozelka. ca 1940)

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