Faurest, Kristin: Ten spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Klauzál tér
ing operettas instead, with great success. Unfortunately, though, on January 2, 1874, fire broke out in the building, and that was the end of the theatre. In 1897, the market hall was opened — the number 3 of five that were constructed at the time under the planning of the city’s engineering office. Like the other four built in the last few years of the 19th century, it was meant to provide a more hygienic, easily-regulated means for vendors to sell to the public, thus putting an end to the chaotic open-air markets that preceded it. As was the case with some of the other market halls, an associated tenement house was also built — the income of which made it possible for the spaces to be leased more cheaply to the vendors. There were more than 300 vendors originally, and there was a separate kosher grocery as well. The ground floor of the dwelling house was filled by restaurants, cafés, offices, a meat inspection office, police premises and an emergency room. The hall was built on a t-shaped plot between Akácfa and Klauzál opposite the theatre's site, and serves thus as a colourful passage as well as a centre of commerce. The gable of the Akácfa utca entrance of the market also has a clock, with an escutcheon with a lion carved from stone informing the viewer that the hall was built by the City of Budapest. To the left of the entrance a Neologue Jewish community’s kosher butcher shop functioned here until it closed in the 1980s. The market hall was renovated in 1987, a process that included a complete spatial reorganization. The market hall is now dominated by a supermarket, though there are still individual vendors as well. There is also an open-air Saturday market in the parking lot at number 11. The houses on and around Klauzál tér themselves bear witness to so many terrible events. In the 1980s there were still many living in these deteriorated buildings with vivid memories of the war, the ghetto, being moved by the authorities, coming back and being ordered to help clear out the ruins. For many, the years have not been kind. One resident at nearby Kazinczy utca 7 remembered the ghetto to interviewers: "Of course we could only go out to the street within the confines of the ghetto, between 10 and 3 p.m. The cemetery was on Klauzál tér. We didn't have coffins, we had to break apart cabinets and bury people in those. This is where we buried my grandfather, too.” On January io, 1945, days before the Soviet liberation, 45 Jews were 34
