Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)
original plans, a similar group of baths and hotels would have been built in the lower section of the island, too, but this plan was fortunately not carried out, and thus the park, that greatest value of the island, was allowed to retain its dominant position. Margaret Island could only be accessed by water. CJntil the middle of the nineteenth century, crossing was effected by rowing boats, which departed either from the port at the Vizafogó in Pest, or from the Buda side, in which case the would-be customer summoned the ferryman by tolling a bell set up by the house at No. 372 Újlak. As early as 1869, steamboats serviced the island. When the baths were opened, brisk little steamboats (called Fecske, Hattyú, Sólyom or Swallow, Swan and Falcon) carried passengers from Pest and Buda to the upper and lower harbours of Margaret Island, shuttling every half hour from morning to night during the season, which lasted from spring to late autumn, and at rarer intervals in the off-season period. Margaret Island as a bathing and holiday resort soon became popular, first with Hungary’s gentry and aristocracy, later with writers, scientists and scholars, and then with the better off bourgeoisie. Besides the resident guests (those staying at the hotels and villas), a large number of visitors came to the island for just a day or evening to take a walk, a bath, or have a drink at the well, a meal at a restaurant, to enjoy the gypsy music or listen to the play of the military band, perhaps to classical music at a concert given in the grand hotel, or maybe to take part at one of the balls and banquets held by various political parties or associations. In their “society” columns the newspapers of the period listed the notabilities and celebrities who put in an appearance on the island; such lists made in the 1880s included the names of the Prince and Princess of Coburg, the Teleki, Semsey, Pejacsevich counts and their family members, as well as those belonging to the baronial families of the Jeszenszkys, Vays and Mednyánszkys; mention was made of politicians Dezső Bánffy, Sándor Wekerle, the bishop Vilmos Fraknói, mayor Károly Kammermayer, minister of culture Ágoston Trefort, book wholesaler Mór Ráth, 26
