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

2 Perczel Mór utca, district V

The apartment mansion known as the Sváb House, designed by László Gyalus, was built in 1901. It overlooked two streets and, mainly, Szabadság tér, the former courtyard of the Újépület (New Building) referred to above. The mansions around this square standing where the blocks, arranged on a square pattern, of the defunct barracks had been, were built after the notorious complex had been demolished in 1899.

Plots were sold only to those whose financial position enabled them to meet the conditions in the official plans for the area's development which required the construction of impressive buildings. Such a buyer was the Sváb family, whose members we could easily have met earlier on (they owned several apartment houses embellished with towers on the Great Boulevard) and whom we nearly ran into in fact - although she came from the Herzog family, the last owner of the gigantic, palatial building at 12 Báthory utca bore the married name Mrs Sándor Sváb.

The total area of the Pest County land owned by the Sváb family, whose most highly esteemed member was Károly, a veteran lieutenant of the war of independence and a long-time member of parliament, was more than 8500 acres. In 1885, Károly Sváb was granted a seat in the upper house, given Hungarian nobility with the title “of Gavosda” and made chairman of the National Hungarian Jewish Foundation Association in 1902. His son Sándor was no longer involved in retailing but had turned his attention to agriculture, like his brother who built the mansion decorated with huge domes and small turrets on Szabadság tér to serve as the family’s Pest residence. The elegant and respectable Café City, an establishment which preserved its reputation for many year, opened on the ground floor in 1905.

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