Témák

In a triangular area located in Lágymányos, bordered by Villányi Road, Bartók Béla Road (then Átlós Road) and Karolina Road, the construction of two estates consisting of detached houses was started in 1907-1908. The two blocks of flats, located a few blocks apart, were not independent of each other: they were linked by their initiators, their building concept and the underlying suburban vision. Both were inspired by the principles of the housing reform movement. Criticism of tenement housing and the idea of home ownership formed the basis of the idea of a housing estate of detached houses on small plots of land.

One representative of the typical triangular blocks of houses bordering the circuses of the Lágymányos district is the block bounded by Kosztolányi Dezső Square, Bocskai Road, Tas vezér Street and Edömér Street. Its development was initiated in 1928 by an advocacy organization of the capital’s public servants. The development of the block took place between the beginning of 1931 and the end of 1938, on five plots, with five apartment houses. The result was a block with a connecting courtyard, with a large inner garden among the residential houses standing on the edges of the plot, similar to the opposite block on Kosztolányi Dezső Square (then Lenke Square). However, unlike the other Lenke Square block, its development did not take place in the spirit of the housing reform movement before World War I, but within the framework of the trend of building methods and floor plan systems that fit into modern architecture between the two World Wars: the spread of perimeter blocks and three-section apartments with an entry hall. Here, the forms of ownership were not formed as a result of experimenting with a reformer approach – which influenced the development of the other Lenke Square block – but were formed within a consolidated framework. Instead of the initial cooperative idea, the houses were realized based on home ownership, created on the basis of the 1924 condominium law.

In the 1910s, Budapest stepped almost unprecedentedly into the forefront of Europe with its social housing programme, followed by the first, ‘classic’ period of municipal housing construction that continued over the decades with minor interruptions until the Second World War. Thanks to these, the capital and the state built some 30,000 low-rent housing units. These tenements and housing estates were scattered in different parts of the city, not only in terms of their date of construction, but also in terms of their spatial distribution. This is explained by the limited number of plots available, which were large enough and easily reachable by public transport, and owned by the capital.
Two of the achievements of this housing era, which spanned more than three decades, stand out: the Hungária Boulevard – Százados Road – Ciprus Street area, and the Kőbányai Road – Pongrác Road – Tomcsányi Street (today Salgótarjáni Road) cluster of plots. A laboratory of its own was created on these sites, as the amount of free space available not only allowed the construction campaigns to subsequently follow each other, but also provided a space for the different types of housing that were simultaneously being built, providing shelter for the different social strata targeted by the projects.

In the first half of the 1930s, the number of housing developments fell sharply, and there was both an absolute and a relative shortage of small flats (the latter being due to excessively high rents). This again spurred the capital to action, which launched a campaign of small housing construction, aiming to create 2-3,000 new dwellings. The new economic conditions resulting from the Second World War eventually prevented this from being fully realized.

"Do you know I'm also looking for a 2-bedroom apartment? And somewhere in Buda. For the time being, since it will only be relevant in the autumn, I'll get my information from the newspapers. For example, at Horthy Circus, a modern 2-bedroom apartment with heating and a hall for 2,650 p[engő]. Nice, eh? That's 220 a month. You will turn crazy if you really start to think about it. And old ones are hard to come by. But I thought about the Tomcsányi's flat, because they're looking for a bigger one. It's 3 bedrooms, nice and spacious, but I don't think it's very sunny. They pay about 1,400. I think they'll be out of there by spring. You can ask Klári for the time being. Then I heard that there are modern houses in Biblia Street (District 11, opposite the ev.[angelical] church, very nice place!), public heating only in the bathroom (this is silly!), and relatively not too expensive, at least for us. A flat that would be suitable for us is about 1,500 p[engő]. It is true that you still have to count the heating, so it goes up a lot. The cheapest modern area is Thököly Road, Amerikai Road, where the number 7 bus takes you. I can't say it's very sympathetic to me, but after all, it's close to the Liget, and one just has to bite the bullet. There the prices of the aforementioned apartments are around 1,400. Of course, there are expensive places too, I've heard that in Retek Street, at Széna Square, they pay 2,200 for 2 bedrooms with heating."

(HU BFL XIV.210 Éva’s letter to Éva Paleta, 15 January 1941)

“It would be desirable for us to make the general public partial to the row house with as wide-ranging publicity as possible [...].” (Münnich, Aladár: A sorházakról [On Row Houses]. A Magyar Mérnök- és Építész-Egylet Közlönye, 1933, 17-18, 107.)

The row house was essentially non-existent as a possible choice amongst the housing types in Budapest until the end of the 1920s. The first group of row houses were built in 1926-1927 on the Buda side (12th district, 56–80 Kiss János altábornagy Street), and the OTI housing estate built in 1929 also contained row houses. After this, a few row house developments were erected in the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, mostly on the Buda side, but this construction can only be described as sporadic. In the majority of the cases, these were multiplex homes, or in other words groups of three or four residences attached to one another in a closed row. They were erected in areas with a pattern of detached home development and were scattered so did not comprise a housing estate. The form of construction that would have created groups of row houses based on uniform plans and unified organization (creating a housing estate or integrated into an estate including various residential types) did not develop in Budapest.

The exterior of the distinctively triangular city block formed by the intersection of Villányi and Bartók Béla roads at Móricz Zsigmond Circle does not stand out from the multitude of commonplace examples of the attached development pattern in Budapest. However, it is special when seen from the inside. It was formed as a result of a unique meeting point of two types of development methods, specifically as a peculiar combination of enclosed courtyard development operating at the scale of each lot and connected courtyard development encompassing multiple lots. This latter pattern was projected upon certain sections of the block during two separate periods when experimentation with development reform for urban blocks was trending.

The triangular block behind present-day 12 Kosztolányi Dezső Square (Lenke Square at that time) became the subject of real estate development activity in the hands of the Fischer and Detoma construction company in 1907. This project was a part of the increasing development of the Lágymányos district after 1905. In Budapest’s property and housing construction markets defined in terms of individual lots, it proved to be out of the ordinary because the project was completed according to a unified concept. Although its development was implemented by lots in accordance with the building regulations, the buildings were still integrated into a unified architectural plan formulated by József Fischer that extended over the entire block. The fulfillment of his concept was ensured by a single owner controlling the properties, resulting in uniform architectural design. The outcome was an ensemble of hygienic residential buildings that followed the most recent international housing reform principles, and it was completed by 1912, so in under five years.

The transformation of apartment houses into condominiums began to spread as a new business practice in Budapest in the first half of the 1920s. Although there were precedents to this phenomenon before and during the First World War, the practice appeared with such frequency in the years following the war that the press took notice and even gave it a special name, subdivision of buildings. In essence it was the sale of existing apartment houses by individual apartments, transforming the buildings into condominiums. This new phenomenon fit in with the slowly emerging trend of reorganizing ownership relationships that became a key factor in housing in the capital.

Condominiums in the form of associations appeared in Budapest and began to spread in the first decades of the 20th century. This new type of housing was set on its path by a public employee interest group, the Országos Tisztviselő Szövetség (National Association of Officials), in 1907, and the first condominiums were created as cooperative building associations in the wake of this between 1907 and 1914. The defining framework for the spread of condominium formation was cooperative association by public employees, but business enterprises appeared alongside this almost immediately. Already in 1909-1910, banks and corporations involved in building construction joined in the erection of condominiums, but the majority that were built before the First World War were the result of cooperative associations. This new form of ownership was called a condominium association, a building construction association, a condominium joint-ownership association, or simply a condominium.

“This morning we went and looked over the apartment carefully one more time. It is in terrible condition. However, I am particularly happy about this, because due to this they will re-plaster it, while Palatinus usually only repaints otherwise. […] However, we have to have it sprayed and they are not providing a stove for the bathroom.” “It is not possible to bargain with them for anything, they only do what they see fit. E.g. the sink is in terrible condition like everything, but they will not provide another one to replace it because it does not have any holes and so it is usable. They will paint the apartment, repair the doors and windows, spackle cracks, and install stoves where there are not any. The rooms are not really big, but they do have good walls.”

(BFL XIII.33 Letter of Magda Balogh to Géza Balthazár, 24 October 1939)

“Along with a single, large common room, we should instead strive for many separate small bedrooms or dens at the same time, so that everybody, not just the adults, but also the male and female children should be given the opportunity for separation. This is because the most basic requirement of life is a properly functioning family organism. The feeling of individuality is what every family member can bring into their own room and its furnishings.”

(Barátosi-Szabó, Ferenc: Családiház és kislakásproblémák [The Problems of Family Homes and Small Apartments]. A Magyar Mérnök és Építész-Egylet Közlönye, 1933, 17–18, 102.)