Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

grandstands, athletics tracks and several tennis courts belonging to the Hungarian Athletics Club (abbreviated MAC in Hungarian) were built at the beginning of the twentieth century. The premises of these were all on the former islet which had by then been joined to Margaret Island. In fact the MAC, that most elegant of all sports clubs in its time, had tennis courts and boat houses on the islet, where tennis competitions, swimming and boat races had been held since 1892. Here, however, there were only modest temporary buildings. The new, semitimber, multi-storey club centre fashioned in “Swiss style” and complete with a look-out tower was built by the renowned architects Korb and Griegl (whose best-known building is the Budapest Academy of Music). In the early 1930s, the MAC buildings on Margaret Island had to be pulled down because of structural deficiencies. As its new, temporary headquarters, in 1933 the club rented an Art Mouveau building to the north of the fields, originally erected in 1912 to house the managerial offices of the share company operating Margaret Island at the time, though later leased to the Spolarich family who ran a restaurant in it. This building is no longer to be seen: it fell victim to the war. Built to plans by Tibor Hübner, the new grandstands of MAC had been comThe indoor pool of the Sports Swimming Pool

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