Buza Péter - Gadányi György: Towering Aspirations - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

Building apartment houses in the metropolis in the period before World War 1 was such a profitable venture that even the Habsburgs, known for their warily thrifty ways, steeled themselves to become landlords in Pest. In other words, the family members deemed the ownership of apartment buildings in Budapest a suitable form of augmenting their private estates.

The jungle of old houses that had formed the ancient kernel of mediaeval Pest was cleared away not long before the turn of the century as part of the preparation for the construction of the Pest end of Elizabeth Bridge. During this clearance operation the very structure of streets and squares was altered. A new emphasis was given to the entire city-scape by the erection of the imposing Klotild Mansions, on either side of the street leading up to the bridge. (The denomination, albeit eliminated from official discourse a long time ago, is still widely used, though the public misconception which holds that only the building to the left is the Klotild Mansion, the other being called Matild, is also alive.)

The twin mansions belonging to her Imperial and Royal Highness, Arch-Duchess Klotild with their stone-latticed towers bracketing the bridge-end were built in 1901 to plans by Kálmán Giergl and Flóris Korb.

It was the same two renowned architects who, two years later, collaborated on the king’s (i.e. Francis Joseph’s) own apartment building, which stood nearby the Klotild Mansions on the square called Ferenciek tere. The roof of the king’s apartment mansion is decorated with equally elegant latticed turrets whose style, like that of their sisters on the Klotild Mansions, gives a clear indication of how deeply the architects of Historicism were influenced by the ascendancy of Art Nouveau.

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