Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
The telephone cathedral - the Józsefváros Exchange
749- It is encircled by a twelve-vaulted row of arcades that can be mounted via a ten-step stairway with a flight on either side, each flanked by open-work stone railings. Designs made for the first Calvary in Pest-Buda are attributed, without documentary evidence to support the hypothesis, to the famous master builder of the Baroque period, András Mayerhoffer. His statues made at a later date (in 1780) are of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and John the Evangelist. Nothing of the statues that once stood beneath the arcades survives, similarly to the Stations of the Cross, whose memory is only preserved in the name of Stáció (Station) utca. The great Pest flood of 1838 may well have played a part in their disappearance. The fate of it all was sealed in 1889 by the growing city's hunger for building plots and the decrepit condition of the structure itself, which was thus slated for demolition. Sculptor Alajos Stróbl took notice of the ruinous Baroque building, and decided to salvage it. As the site best suited for preserving the building, his choice fell on the romantic Epreskert, which was already serving as the grounds of the Sculptor’s Master School. In 1893 he and his pupils took the structure apart and transferred its pieces to its new location. A skylight was installed in the chapel space to render it suitable for hosting exhibitions. The building gradually fell into disrepair again, and it was further damaged during World War II. Plans for its reconstruction were made during the sixties of the last century (Ágnes H. Vladár-Ernő Szakái), but its historically faithful restoration was not completed before 1970. On the initiative of Péter Búza, the Budapest Association for Urban Preservation undertook to save and renovate the crumbling building, which is how the reconstruction of the Calvary could be completed by the Easter of 2006. The architect making the drawings for the restoration job was Tamás Albert, and the chief restorer working on the site was Péter Szomolányi. After its quirky history, the Baroque monument was given a new lease of life as its rotunda and chapel hall became the venue of art exhibitions and other cultural events (Evenings at the Strawberry Fieldi). His pupils and admirers paid their last respects to Ignác Kokas by the symbolic bier of the late, Kossuth Prize winning, painter set up here on 27 November 2009. The telephone cathedral — the Józsefváros Exchange The demand for telephones grew at such a rate in turn-of-the-century Budapest that one exchange centre after the other had to be built. With the Terézváros Exchange working at full capacity, the new telephone centre meant to service the area was built at Mária Terézia (today's Horváth Mihály) tér. The building, unique in appearance 64
