Porhászka László: The Danube Promenade - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

promenade. (Following the bankruptcy of his business in the wake of World War I, the owner, Sámson Deli, committed suicide in the early twenties.)

Plots IV and V were originally reserved for the construction of the new National Theatre by the municipality of the capital. However, the Thonet brothers offered 404,000 forints for the land, the largest amount paid for a plot of land in Pest to date. The famous furniture manufacturers signed the purchase contract in 1869. The city spent this income on buying land for the future Opera House; the original owner of the latter plot then, in turn, used the money to finance the establishment of the Népszínház (People’s Theatre) on Blaha Lujza tér, where later the National Theatre was housed for decades.

The five-storey apartment block named Thonet Court was built between 1869 and 1871 in neo-Renaissance style to plans by Antal Szkalnitzky and his brother-in-law Henrik Koch Jr. Historian Károly Vörös records in his volume Egy uiláguáros születése (The Birth of a Metropolis) that the Thonet Court, registered as the largest apartment block in Budapest for years, generated the largest revenue, too, earning 106,000 forints in 1872, which is why the new Grand Hotel Hungária was relegated to second place with its 80,000 forint takings, though admittedly only in the first year of the latter's operation.

On the side overlooking the Danube, originally there were winged putti decorating the recesses of the arches above all three projection gates. (Of these only the pair in

Perspective view of the promenade with the Elizabeth Bridge

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