Veszter Gábor: Villas in Budapest. From the compromise of 1867 to the beginning of World War II - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)

Béla Sipeki Balás's villa (Ödön Lechner, 1904-05) is today the base of the Hungarian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted.

XIV, Hermina út 47

THE EMERGENCE OF APARTMENT VILLAS - A SIDE-SHOOT OF THE STYLE

The villa district by Andrássy út experienced gradual transformation in the years following the Millennium Celebrations of 1896. The first villas turned out to be too small, and their new owners set about important works of transformation. The closed form of the neo-Renais- sance villa was broken, and extended by large annexes added to the garden fagade. Some modest middle-class villas were transformed into luxurious aristocratic mansions, and some of the extended villas were divided into independent flats taking up one floor each. Large plots were divided and new houses resembling villas from the outside were erected; these were in fact detached housing units, or apartment villas. Following its appearance, the apartment villa, one of the most popular types of building of the first half of the twentieth century, started to spread gradually throughout the whole city.

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