Buza Péter: Bridges of the Danube - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

al experts to be one of the most beautiful ones of its type, the console bridge.

This is the shortest Danube bridge in Budapest, featuring a three-span steel structure supported by consoles. The peculiarity of its design is the double-buttressed hanging support which is a brilliant application of a contemporary innovation. In this case a so-cailed Gerber piece, a 50-metre long independent part with no extra support was placed onto the consoles extending from the piers towards the middle of the river. Due to this solution the constructors were not obliged to sacrifice the airy elegance of the structure to safety considerations.

This beautiful construction was blown up on 16 January 1945. Reopened on 20 August 1946, it was the first bridge to be rebuilt. Since then it has been renovated in two phases. First in 1980-81 the maintenance of the carriageway was carried out. The counterweight casings on both banks were opened and checked for the first time. Each contains 600 tons of lead, balancing the weight of the consoles extending well beyond the piers. After more than 80 years a thorough supervision and the reinforcement of the corroded supporting elements was due. (inlike the paint job, this was completed. With harsh green from the top down and worn grey from the bottom up, for four years the Szabadság Bridge looked like a sloughing steel dinosaur, not much of a show-piece for the planned economy. To the credit of the engineers responsible for the renovation, they did not ask for permission to put back the historical coat of arms of Hungary which had decorated the beautiful gates, designed by Virgil Nagy, since the beginning. Since no permission was sought, none was denied and thus the coat of arms was retained. The turuls, those symbolic birds of ancient Hungarian legends, were also retained even though in the 1946 reconstruction some people driven by revolutionary zeal wanted to have them removed from the top of the pier gates.

38