Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)
The Synagogue in Bethlen tér
of Antal Fuchs on a plot at 42—43 István tér, as the square was called then. The four-storey, clinker-covered building has a broad middle-projection and two corner-projections on its main front. The vaulted windows of the upper storeys are twinned on the projections. Between the windows connecting two floors are clinker-covered engaged columns with stone sections. The columns of the projections stand on a coffered stone base-course, while the horizontal division is accentuated by the repeated forceful cornices. Initially, there was but a small prayer-room functioning in the school building. The large synagogue that had been designed to stand in the courtyard could not be built due to insufficient funding. The prayer-room was only enlarged into a temple in 1931—32. Designs for this were made by Lipót Baumhorn with his son-in-law and associate in old age, György Somogyi. The original prayer-room was on the ground floor so it would have made sense to knock down the ceiling and join it with the upper floor where the gallery could have gone. The designers sank the garden level flush with the former basement, thus making room for the gallery on what had been the ground floor. The enlarged prayer-room was given an entrance on the West and an Eastern wall across the hall. Instead of bespeaking Baumhorn's style, the facade ■ entrance to the synagogue in Bethlen tér 75
