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

Throughout the 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s Ferenc Kende was employed by the Stühmer firm as its permanent architect. He was the one who created a uniform image for the company’s chain of shops by using a recognizable imitation Baroque and Art Deco style. All that has remained in Budapest from this early period are the inlaid furnishings of a 1926 shop (1 Bartók Béla út, District XI) and a 1927 wooden shopfront deprived of its ornaments (13 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, District VI). The arguably most beautiful Stühmer shopfront of Kende, a modern one already, built in 1934 at 1 Kecskeméti utca in District V, fell victim to the purist principles of historic buildings protection at the end of the 1980s. As a matter of fact, Kende built a row of uniform modern shopfronts, in which the sweet shop was the last element at the corner, on the whole ground floor area of the Romantic apartment block. The dynamic arched shapes of his streamlined style characterized these shopfronts, which were covered with frosted glass between the chromium-plated ribs and with smoked glass on the base and next to the entrance. The glass shop sign could be illuminated and its beautiful metal letters were placed among the ribs. When the block was renovated, the frontage was dismantled and in its place unimaginative and dull gateways have appeared, admittedly matching the style of the building. By way of compensation, the sweet shop has been fitted with the 1883 furniture of the first Stühmer outlet, which had been stored in the Museum of Commerce and Catering.

The frontage of only one of the rival sweet shops called “Szent István Bonbon” (Saint Stephen Chocolates) has outlasted the past fifty years. It belonged to the Szent István Nutriment Works, which, together with the Kőbányai Civic Brewery, formed one share company. The activities of the works included the manufacture of nutriments, ersatz coffee, malt products, sweets and chocolate and their wholesale distribution. It did not establish its own retail chain and had only one major outlet in Blaha Lujza tér. Another elegant small shop opened in 1936 designed by the architect Pál Vidor and built by József Martini (31 Andrássy út, District VI). The designer’s father Emil Vidor was an architect much in demand at the turn of the century and also a member of the share company’s board, so it was understandable that either the father or the son was asked to plan any construction that the brewery or the nutriment works wanted to build.

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