Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

From gashouse to natural gas mains

they may not wish to undertake installing and operating the gas lighting oh Pest accepting the same, or to the city even more advantageous, conditions. As soon as we have word of the answer we wilt report its tenor' — was the way Vasárnapi Újság voiced its hopes, but in vain. The commission went to the foreign consortium whose members (Nuremberg factory manager Josef Meier-Kapferer, and member of the Rothschild family, engineer Ludwig Stefany of Mannheim) conceded the deal to a group of Vienna-based investors. That was how the General Austrian Illumination Gas Company was able to build the first gas works of Pest in Lóvásár (today's Köztársaság) tér.

The 25-year contract signed in 1855 provided for every detail. Based on prior experience, it was stipulated that gas was exclusively to be made from coal, its price could not be changed, and the end product must neither be dirty nor malodorous. One part of the street lights was to be kept burning with a bright white light until midnight, the other until daybreak. (These specifications referred to the weaknesses of theatre lighting as the gas used there had "luminosity that scarcely went beyond a mere shimmer, while its smell could be lelt as tar away as Óbuda”.) The outcome of any new enterprise being dubious, the authorities stipulated that the design of the lights enable conventional, oil-fuelled, operation. The oil lamps were not removed either, as the installation of gas lights was only economical where gas pipes had already been laid for some other industrial or domestic purposes.

After the deal was made, the winners of the concession started to construct the first gas works of Pest: the technical plans were made by Ludwig Stefany, and the in■ The main building of the termer gashouse in Köztársaság tér

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