Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Natural or artificial?

Meanwhile various temporary measures were taken to solve the difficult problem of supplying water to the population of Buda. Although the Castle Garden Kiosk providing the Castle Hill with its water supply had started its operation, the construction of a permanent and modern waterworks system for the Buda side, too, was felt to be overdue by the 1870s. The location first selected for the purpose was the Óbuda Island, but the authorities eventually settled on the Újlak Danube bank. Competitive designs were prepared by invited experts: Heinrich Gill (Berlin), Bernhard Salbach (Dresden), Klein and Fraser (London). The authorities thanked them for their efforts, but in view of his impressive track record gained on the Pest side it was János Wein whom they commissioned with the job. Wein proved worthy of the confidence placed in him by providing the city with clean and inexpensive drinking water.

The Buda-Újlak wells were also operated according to the principle of bankside filtering with the natural layers of gravel being the thickest on this section of the riverbank. During the construction of the waterworks a two-hundred-metre vertical collecting pipe was laid five metres beneath the riverbed. At the beginning the plant operated at a daily capacity of 21 thousand cubic metres of water pressed into the reservoirs by a two-hundred horsepower steam engine (for which posthumous credit goes to the Láng and the Rock machine factories). The hilly surface of Buda necessitated the establishment of six pressure zones, the city was enmeshed with a pipeline

■ The Castle Garden Kiosk. The onetime water works is currently a casino

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