Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
fact that the owner was only allowed to build on one part of his land. The twostorey building had an eight-room flat on each floor with an interior design which was rather uncommon in Hungary at the time. A room each was added to the flats on the garden front in 1912, which broke the strict geometric order of the original design. The owner and the designer, too, was already Rezső Ray Jr. The Ray Villa announced, and perhaps announces to this day, that its designer had been educated in a country with a foreign architectural culture. The block course of the footing, the terracotta-coloured grid-pattern of the tile covering between the edges, the ornamental carpentry work of the cover mould and the middle gable or the carefully wrought iron railing on the middle balcony and the windows were far from common in Hungary. (If anything similar is found in Pest, it soon turns out to have been designed in the studio of Rezső Ray Sr. The villas at Nos. 107 and 117 Andrássy út were also his work, though both perished in World War 11.) Occupied by offices for years now, the building was extended with newly added attic space; its arched, double-flight stairs were demolished and replaced, in the early nineties, with some less graceful stairs. In 1896 the villa’s 462-square-fathom plot was divided and a two-storey rented villa was built on the less than 200-square-fathom section in Délibáb utca by Rezső Ray ■ The Ray Villa (No. 105 AndráMy út) 49
