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

be vindicated, was that the new thoroughfare would set a trend of construction projects and the spontaneous development of the city.

Without doubt, the opening of the avenue presented the city planners with a huge challenge, which was tackled by the Municipal Board of Public Works established in 1870 by Andrássy

following

the example of a similar board in London. The first task was to determine the precise route of the street, very broadly assigned in the original idea to be located somewhere between Király

utca and

the railway line. (The area roughly coincides with that of today's District VI.) This was one of the outlying districts of the city at the time. There were but a few larger, sometimes multi-storey, constructions and a handful of factories scattered among single-storey affairs, auxiliary buildings and ramshackle cottages standing in narrow streets. In the outlying areas (east of today's Felső

erdősor and

Szinyei Merse streets) there were potato plots alternating with vineyards and a few holiday cottages in between. The route was to be determined in such a way that it should answer its purpose without having to demolish — and of course redeem or appropriate in advance — more buildings than was absolutely necessary. Even so, the extravagance of the government provoked some heated argument in parliament with critics protesting against the idea of spending millions on a luxury "promenade".

In the end, the majority voted for the granting of collaterals in December 1870 and thus preparatory work could be started. The area was redeemed by the Board of Public Works, after which it commissioned the Sugárút

Construction Company, a French—German—Hungarian consortium established for the purpose, to build the route (including public utilities, paving, etc.) and to sell the building sites along the street. The company did in fact start the jobs of demolition, road construction, subdivision and even the construction of a two-unit block of flats, the four large apartment blocks of the Oktogon

and

four villas, but the Vienna stock exchange crash in 1873 dealt such a severe blow to its finances that it was unable to bring the project to completion. Following extended negotiations, the company rescinded the contract in 1876, and returned the land to the Board of Public Works, which was thus obliged to continue the project by itself.

Aside from the interlude described above, the construction of Sugárút

was

overseen by the Board of Public Works. First the principles of routing were determined: the 2200 metre length of the route was divided into three sections articulated by two squares with each section having a distinctive character of its own. Along the section from Váci

Boulevard

(today’s Bajcsy-Zsilinszky

út) to

the Oktogon

four

and five storey buildings were allowed to be built in close file on either side of the 32 metre wide street. The second section, 43 metres in breadth, stretched from the Oktogon

to

the Circle (today's Kodály

körönd) and

6