Gerle János: Palaces of Money - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

Dedicated to Ferenc Bodor

Teller's window in the Timber Bank

In recent years developments in business have had the most spectacular impact of all on the cityscape of Budapest. In the course of the continuous flow of commercial activities, small shops frequently change owners, contents and fronts. What strikes the onlooker as the basic single change is that new branch offices belonging to new banks have appeared at focal points of city life. At one time these spots were occupied by coffee houses, those busy centres of social life. Their customers would spend all morning sitting by a cup of coffee, expressing their social existence in their personal presence, in seeing people regularly, in receiving and transmitting information on the spot. Those happy days of old were then followed by a time when it was expedient to move the scene of personal presence and the exchange of information to the back rooms of hidden espresso bars darkened by dusty, smoke- stained curtains. The compelling urges of this new age necessitated the opening of self-service restaurants,

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