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

the OTP to the Hungarian Credit Bank, which has constructed a brand new cashier’s hall in the building. It is also the Hungarian Credit Bank that occupies a building erected in the seventies-the former Újpest rakpart headquarters of the now defunct Hungarian Communist Youth Association. Inter-Europa Bank has taken over no. 15 Szabadság tér. The building, which formerly housed the Ministry of Labour, dates from the period at the turn of the century when buildings were erected around the square. Agrobank moved into an office block in Böszörményi út built in the style of late Social Realism, while Realbank resides in an Andrássy út mansion. It is a political curiosity, even against this colourful backdrop, that the local branch of Austria’s Creditanstalt is housed in an eclectic, turn-of-the-century building in Akadémia utca that at one time served as the headquarters of Mátyás Rákosi, head of the MDP or the Hungarian Workers’ Party (the communist party name in the Stalinist period). Another curiosity, this one from an architectural point of view, is that the new headquarters of the General Exchange Bank has been Constructed through the rebuilding of a former plant of the Budapest Electricity Works. The reconstruction (architectural design by Tibor Várady and Zoltán Györgyi, interior design by Zsuzsa Székelyi) has fortunately left intact the valuable facade of the Art Deco building erected in 1930 to plans by Györgyi and Román.

3. Several banks, especially smaller branches, are housed in trade centres, which have been built since the mid-eighties. The first of these was the Váci utca “World Trade Center” by József Finta and Gyula Csizmár, a complex which came to serve as a stylistic and functional example to be followed by later office buildings. The Central European International Bank was located in an apartment-cum-store building erected in 1979, thus preceding the Trade Center. This structure marked the beginning of a process of modernisation in Váci utca, which involved the building of passageways and shopping precincts to plans by György Vedres. Several banks operate in the corner building of the East-West Center (designed by Lajos Zalaváry), across from the Hotel Astoria, and others can be found in the Alag Center in Hegyalja út (designs by Csaba Virág and Árpád Marillái).

4. Banks occupying a floorspace taken up by just one branch office have converted various shops, restaurants, pubs, etc. A random example is the Konzumbank branch, which operates in a former self-service restaurant near the Western Station: another instance

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