Kiss Katalin: Industrial Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

are decorated with larger wall strips. Among the old buildings well worth seeing are those of the clock and pressure regulator, the workshop, the store, the office building, the workers’ welfare building, the police barracks which also served as an ambulance station, the boiler building and the electric station where a little factory museum has been installed.

Through the Gas Works we arrive at the “outside quarters" of the chief clerks. Mine large villas stand on the bank of a dead branch of the Danube. The buildings display the characteristics of Hungarian Art Nouveau style. This attractive estate, planned by Lóránt Almási Balogh, is very different from the one proposed by Albert Weiss, which was rather more urban with inner courtyards. Almási was very much concerned with the creation of Hungarian dwelling house type with garden. He united the requirements of conciseness and practicality with the advantages of pretty and attractive country dwellings. The Óbuda settlement evokes a small town central square. It is very strange that it turns a rather unfinished back-facades and blocks-to the outside world.

Not long ago a sociological investigation was made about life on the estate. The analysis revealed that the inhabitants of this architecturally inverted area form a very close, enclosed and positive community, which is a rarity today.

The former Valero Silk Factory V, Honvéd utca 26-30

Pest’s first private factory, the Valero Silk Factory was established in 1776 in Kürt utca by the Spanish specialists István and Tamás Valero. In contrast with the state silk factories in Óbuda, it produced not only semimanufactured goods, but also silk veil, crape, velvet and taffeta. Between 1839 and 1844 István Valero’s son, Antal Valero had built an enormous modern factory at Honvéd utca 26-30. It was designed by József Hild. In 1848 the Valero Factory was already the most important silk producer of the Habsburg Empire. Three hundred workers produced silk here with two hundred and fifty looms. During the War of Independence of

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