Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Steps to our bellies - from the Central Market Hall to Lehel tér
its elegance, its noble materials, the colour scheme of its facings the building makes a splendid appearance to this day; due to the mere fact that it has managed to survive the period of "socialist property management" prevailing in Budapest for so long, the building passes for a minor miracle. It has been used as the setting of innumerable commercials and feature films shot on location here, the last of these being Zsombor Dyga’s award-winning movie called Köntörjjalak (Stonewalled). Also in the interwar period, a huge complex of buildings with flats meant to satisfy the needs of the period's middle classes was raised in the New Leopold Town, an area along the Danube, north of the Grand Boulevard. The development was carried out according to strict stipulations. In 1933, the Board of Public Works approved the plans of plot division and area development for Szent István park and environs; the comprehensive arrangement even provided for the appearance of the facades. In 1935-36, the most elegant luxury apartment house of the neighbourhood was built to designs by the Hofstátter-Domány partnership on the plot at 38—42 Pozsonyi út, on the premises of the former parquet factory. The building featured large, multi-bedroom flats with terraces, cheap, thermal-water heating, spacious staircases and high-quality floor and wall facing. The original designs made provisions for a large capacity cinema, too, but these plans fell through with only the Danube Park Café opened on the ground floor. The staircase in the shape of an elongated ellipsis in the Danube Park House and the arching set of elegant in the lobby of the building are architectural works of a permanent value, similarly to the helical staircase in the building at No. 53-55 designed by István Hámor (Hamburger), which has served as the setting of several commercial and feature films shot on location in the past few decades. Steps to our bellies — from the Central Market Hall to Lehel tér Budapest was in ever growing need of a modern, roofed market hall as the city of more than half a million approached the Millenary celebrations. At the time there were forty-four smaller or larger markets within the capital’s boundaries. In 1892, the Economics and Public Supply Committee of the city invited tenders for designing and building a hall. The competition was won by Samu Pecz. "A fine building must be both harmonious and useful," was his philosophy, which he set out to test on this commission, too; the result is that the hall has become by now a classic 49
