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

ments, but there was a gentleman’s tailor working on the premises, too. There is perhaps no-one in Budapest not familiar with the emblem of the Gutmann store - human figures pulling at the legs of untearable trousers. Made of curved neon tubes, the familiar sign still appears above the entrance and is today the logo of “Verseny áruház” (“Competition Department Store”), the legal successor.

The uniform row of two-storey shopfronts also exists, but from their shabby condition and present design, resulting from much tinkering, one cannot even guess at what a splendid sight it used to be. The frontage was constructed (and probably designed) by the Haas & Somogyi Co., who were so proud of it that they used a photo of the Gutmann store for their newspaper advertising. The huge plate-glass shop windows were set in chromium-plated frames while the solid surfaces were made of green and white striped “cipollino” marble slabs, some of which can still be seen on the Dohány utca side. The shop sign, which consisted of one-metre-tall metal letters placed on the cornice of the ground floor shop windows, was illuminated by neon tubes at night. There were neon strips along the edge of the projecting roof providing a finish for the shopping storeys, and ceiling illumination was used to light the arcaded entrance on the corner.

One of the most imposing modern portals in the inner city proper can still be seen at 11 Ferenciek tere in District V In 1938 Vilmos Lipcsei’s women’s fashion store was completed in the lower part of the apartment block with a gilded fagade to plans by Ignác Alpár. The elegant fashion store occupying three storeys (basement, ground floor and mezzanine) was designed by György Koródy and constructed by Gyula Iványi, while the metal frontage was built by Lajos Márkus Co. The shopfront on the two lower storeys appears to be one huge aperture covered with glass. This effect was achieved by using three slim ferro-concrete pillars to support the front wall. Only one is visible by the entrance because the other two are concealed by the divisions of the shop window. The four vertical divisions of the shopfront, framed with a narrow white marble strip, conform to the pillars of the building as they are all richly decorated. There is therefore no dissonance between the modern shopfront and the historical-looking building. The entrance is cut with calculated precision into the large-scale surface of the two-storey bronze frontage. The column supporting the disk-shaped projecting roof divided the flow of

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