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

33 VÁROSLIGETI FASOR, DISTRICT VII

Zsigmond Vidor, the learned eye-specialist, whose family name had been Lustig when he was born the son of a watchmaker with a modest income in the town of Nagy- kálló, was not a wealthy man. Perhaps it would never have occurred to him to build, in Budapest, a villa to let had it not been for his son Emil, who was to become famous as a successful architect after the turn of the century or for his childless older brother who lived and died in Vienna, leaving a large fortune to his younger brother and sisters. Given these circumstances, however, construction work started and the whole extended family moved into this house in 1906. The new tenants included the family of one of Zsigmond Vidor’s sisters headed by Lajos Szilárd, who ran a civil engineering business. The oldest of the three Szilárd sons was called Leó. He was later to become famous as “the father of the atomic bomb” (a title he is said to have always protested against). His two best pals, János Heumann and Jenő Wigner were frequent visitors to the multi-storey Vidor Villa. These three were the friends whom Albert Einstein referred to as “Die Burschen aus dem Faschor” - Those chaps from the fasor (boulevard). The reference was to the fact that the three had attended the famous Lutheran grammar school in Városligeti fasor (City Park Boulevard).

Here is what the contemporary Építőművészeti Krónika (Architectural Chronicle) says of the tower-topped villa designed by Emil Vidor, a construction that steals features hitherto associated with resort chalets into the world of town houses: it was “built in a style advantageously diverging from the modern Budapest style”. Vidor mixed, as he did elsewhere, Hungarian folkloric elements into the Art Nouveau style, which he employs with moderation anyway. Furthermore he added motifs learnt from Károly Kós with whom he had cooperated on several assignments.

This is a curious building, much like a castle where the countless turrets are by no means out of place and where the frank presence of the timber beams avert any kind of sweetish-tacky aftertaste.

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