Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

■ The

Lotz Hall (No. 39 Andrássy

út)

a room which, having lost its original function of hosting balls and banquets, has never fulfilled any retail-related function, came to be connected to the new building on a level not flush with that of Zsigmond Sziklai's galleried department store with a covered interior courtyard — a modern affair by the standards of the period. In many ways, the hall is related to the refreshment room of the Opera House, except that this one has a finer interior and proportions more pleasing to the eye. Standing right in the middle of the city, it has been left unused for almost a century now. (To imagine just how beautiful the building of the Theresa Town Casino must once have been, one had better take a look at the front towards Paulay Ede

utca from

Hegedű

utca as

the facade of the banqueting hall, dilapidated as it may be, is still standing.) The six-storey department store did much to break the harmony of Andrássy

út —

as contemporary critics complained. Its height was not adjusted to its neighbours, its bare bulkhead turning to the street covered by no more than the words of some advertisement. Reminiscent of the Berlin Jugendstil,

the

style of the facade jarred with the neo-Renaissance overall effect of the avenue.

"Laymen and experts uniting in revolt against the 'intruder' were right as long at they complained against the tasteless and inartistic appearance of the department store. But any department store, however well designed, in the manner oh the Messel

Store

in Bertin, it might have been, would have broken the harmony oh the street. In hact the better it was as 26