Ferkai András: Shopfronts - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1996)
The bustling business districts with their countless shop windows and rows of old and new, elegant and ordinary, exquisite and garish shops form an organic part not only of our cityscapes but also of our concept of cities. The “ground floor of the city” is before our eyes day after day. It has a much more powerful effect on us than the buildings themselves because the native of a city rarely looks up above the level of the shop windows; doing so is the hallmark of the tourist. Window-shopping, however, is a pleasure enjoyed by everyone. Although the object of our window-shopping is the-products on display, we notice and evaluate the way they are arranged and presented as well as their architectural setting. The arrangement of a shop window and the front of a shop both play an important part in determining whether the shop catches our attention and gains our confidence or allows us to walk by without any interest. Shopfronts represent a transient genre. Whenever fashions and demands change or the shopkeepers are replaced, shopfronts are also changed or rebuilt. They are not built to last forever; their fate has always been connected to the growth or decline of trade. Shopfronts faithfully reflect the state of trade and the prevailing tastes in different periods. From them one can judge their makers’ expertise, skill and care - or lack of it. The shopfronts of Budapest tell the story of about a century and a half. During this time trade underwent periods of growth, had its golden age and reached frighteningly low points more than once. Quite a few shopfronts were destroyed during the siege of Budapest in 1944-45 and in the street-fighting in 1956. The nationalization of private commerce in 1948 and the centrally-planned economy prevailing for the next forty years didn’t do them much good, either. It is therefore a miracle that there is anything left in Budapest from the earlier periods of shopfront building. From doorway to shopfront Shopfronts only appeared in Eastern Europe in the middle of the 19th century, when the development of trade had reached a certain stage. Before that it was only the doorway that linked the shops to the streets. Merchants moved from open marketplaces to vaulted ground-floor spaces under the arcades of buildings sometime in the Middle 5
