Ferkai András: Shopfronts - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1996)

attached to the wooden frames. From the mid-1920s one or two companies trading mainly in luxury items could afford to have their shopfronts designed by industrial architects employing more expensive and finer materials. Not only the fagades of these, but also their interior and furnishings followed the same style. From among the surviving examples, one chemist’s and two draper’s premises in the inner city are listed monuments of the country’s applied arts heritage.

Small but all the more elegant is the former perfumery of Kálmán Kosztelitz (18 Váci utca, District V) designed by Béla Füredi in the middle of the 1920s. Rather like a chapel, at one end there is a “chancel” covered with a semicircular quarter dome. The solemnity is enhanced by the gold-coloured divisions decorating the neo-Baroque furnishings and the white painted wall panelling. The recently restored frontage appears simpler than the interior. The reason is that with the passing of the years its smaller or

The Kosztelitz perfumery in the 1920s at 18 Váci utca, V

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