Faurest, Kristin: Ten spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Mechwart liget

The park, covering about 18,000 square meters, was redesigned in 1945 by Főkert director Vilmos Jancsó. Among its trees are a more than one century old Paulownia tomentosa. The square had been called Statistics square — the Statistics office is nearby, and a neighbouring street is named for statisticians and directors Elek Fényes and László Buday — and was named for András Mechwart (1834—1907) only in 1926. Mechwart himself was born in Schweinfurt, an industrial town on the Main in lower Bavaria, and was as a young apprentice already recognized for his brilliance. He studied at the polytechnic in Augsburg. He studied trains, mill machines and bridge building before coming to Hungary in 1859 and working for Abraham Ganz's foundry in Buda. In 1869 he became the director and after Ganz’s death in 1874 its owner- director. He retired with high honours from the Academy of Sciences. He was an early leader in the development of the railroad. An earlier statue of him stood in the park until the Second World War, when it was destroyed and taken away. It was replaced by a limestone bust by András Kocsis in 1965.

Mechwart is not the centrepiece of a homogeneously-planned settlement, which puts it in contrast with some of the other squares described here. It isn’t surrounded by uniformly-planned houses and it isn't a coherent part of

■ "The night has a thou&and eyet,. and the day but one..." - Francii William Bourdillon

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