Clustering of condominiums in the urban space: the development of a block on Ilka Street

At the beginning of their expansion in Budapest, between 1907 and 1914, condominiums were built in various parts of the city. They were spread roughly equally between the Buda and Pest sides, and there were few parts of the city where they did not appear. They appeared in the Lágymányos, Németvölgy and Víziváros neighborhoods, and in Pest in the Inner City, today's Újlipótváros, as well as Terézváros, Erzsébetváros and Józsefváros, and even in Kőbánya. The projects that only reached the planning stage were even more dispersed, with ideas for the area behind Margit Boulevard, the lower areas of Naphegy, as well as Zugló and Ferencváros. Among the developers' targets, the Castle District, Újlak and Óbuda, as well as Lipótváros, were completely left out. Despite their spatial dispersion, their spread nevertheless showed a distinctive pattern: there were pockets of densification where more than one or two of them appeared or were planned. This pattern showed that the construction of one condominium led to the organization of others in its neighborhood. Such clustering could be observed in blocks of land in Lágymányos, but also on the Pest side, in the vicinity of the Városliget (City Park): in a block of land in Ilka Street, the idea of five condominiums took shape around 1909-1910.

The block in question is located between Ilka Street and Stefánia Road, bordered by Semsey Andor Street and Thököly Road. Its specificity was its border position at the junction of the unbroken row developments zone and the villa zone, i.e. the detached housing zone intended for holiday homes. This boundary location was of particular benefit to the housing design of the period. The area with developments in an unbroken row was in direct contact with the gardens of the villas built in the detached housing zone, providing a greater scope for the block-building reform that was also developing in Budapest in the first decade of the 20th century, which sought to implement the hygienic housing principles of the housing reform movement that had been attacking tenement building for decades. In this spirit, the years between 1905 and 1914 saw the proliferation of apartment buildings in Budapest, both in the form of tenement houses and condominiums, which sought to eliminate the enclosed courtyard and to multiply street facades. In particular, between 1909 and 1914, a large number of French and connecting courtyard houses were built in the city, sometimes on two adjoining plots of land at the same time.

The plot layout from Gizella Road to Stefánia Road changed after the land subdivisions of the 1880s and 1890s, and then with the opening of Ilka Street beyond Thököly Street in 1905. Even after 1905, however, the plots of land in this area still retained the remnants of their former state, and there was more than one plot that still extended from Ilka Street to Stefánia Road, and even Semsey Andor Street did not cut the block in two. Even though the division of the long plots between Ilka Street and Stefánia Road had already been partially completed by the 1890s, the area was still characterized by an alternation of split and undivided plots around 1907. Most of them reached only to the middle of the block from Ilka Street, while the two plots at 28 and 24 Ilka Street still extended to Stefánia Road.

In 1909, only the Thököly Road side of this block of plots was developed: holiday cottages and one- or two-storey houses were built here between 1885 and 1891. On the rest of the plots, however, there were hardly any residential buildings. The plots on Stefánia Road were empty, only one of them had a guard shack, and there was only one residential building on Ilka Street: at number 34, in the late 1890s, a U-shaped, ground-floor house was commissioned by Vince Cristofoli, a building materials manufacturer, with a large yard for stables and storage, open to the street. The change came in the first months of 1909, when the idea of building a tenement house on the plot at number 30 and a condominium on the adjacent one at number 32 was conceived. On 23 April 1909, Mrs Bernát Weinréb, née Netti Klein received a building permit for a three-storey tenement house at number 30. The plans for the closed courtyard house with suspended corridors on each floor were drawn up by Dezső Bán. The house was completed within a year, on 18 November 1909 it received the occupancy permit. At the junction of the two building zones, on the side of the plot facing Stefánia Road, Dezső Bán left a 3 meter strip of land unbuilt, in accordance with municipal regulations, essentially creating a second street façade. The rooms located in the rear cross-wing that closed off the courtyard of the house looked to this unbuilt strip. At the same time, the condominium at number 32 was built, designed also by Dezső Bán, commissioned by the 'Tűzhely' ('Fireplace') Association.

The first to start building condominiums in the area was the 'Tűzhely' Homeowners Association (from April 1909, a Cooperative). Although the National Civil Servants' Association, an advocacy organization that had launched the civil servants' condominium building movement in Budapest at the beginning of 1907, had been dissolved by the autumn of 1908, the idea of building civil servants' condominiums did not go unfulfilled: in August 1908 the 'Tűzhely' Homeowners Association was founded to continue the work. The 'Tűzhely' was the first to purchase the Ilka Street plot for the purpose of organizing a condominium on 31 March 1909. The rear boundary of the plot at No. 32 abutted the still undeveloped plots on the Stefania Road side - one of which extended back towards the rear of the plot at No. 32 Ilka Street. The house-building cooperative, established on 25 February 1909, commissioned Dezső Bán to design the building. The architect took advantage of the site's location, and instead of a closed courtyard dwelling, he based his design on the reformer idea of a connecting courtyard.

Bán left the courtyard, enclosed on three sides by wings with suspended corridors, open on the fourth side towards 34 Ilka Street, creating a connecting courtyard. On the other side and along the rear boundary, he left garden strips unbuilt, as required by the regulations, which could connect to the neighboring gardens. Thus, on the opposite side to the open courtyard at number 34, a connecting side courtyard was created from the rear boundary of the plot to the center of the plot, providing a quasi-street frontage in the narrow unbuilt and landscaped strip. In addition, development of villas with gardens on the Stefania Road side of the block was used to create a quasi-street-facing garden facade along the rear boundary of the site, as at number 34. The connecting courtyards and connecting side courtyards allowed Bán to create apartments that all had a street-facing or garden-facing room, i.e. a living space with a view of the garden courtyard or the back garden, free of a suspended corridor in front of its windows.

The construction of the building dragged on for years and it was not until the end of August 1915 that it received an occupancy permit. Meanwhile, three plots away, on 13 May 1910, a co-operative of the co-owners was formed to acquire and build on the land at 26 Ilka Street. The plot had been bought a few months earlier, in mid-January 1910, by Pál Kertész for the purpose of building a tenement house. They commissioned Gyula Fodor, the architect of the cooperative house built at 64 Aréna Road in 1907-1908, who drew up plans for a three-storey tenement house in March 1910. Fodor envisioned a closed courtyard house on the site, and only built a garden-facing façade towards the rear plot on Stefánia Road, which was still empty ten years later. It is true that the inner courtyard, designated as a garden, was only viewed from two sides, not from all around, but courtyard-facing apartments were still included in the design. However, the fate of the property then took a turn. On 4 September, the cooperative bought the plot from Pál Kertész and entrusted the design to Ármin Krausz instead of Gyula Fodor. There must have been a financial reason for the sale, because while Pál Kertész paid 54,615 crowns for the plot at the beginning of 1910, he sold it at the beginning of September of the same year for 97,733 crowns, i.e. almost one and a half times the price. Ármin Krausz completed the new plans in October 1910, and the house received the occupancy permit on 20 November 1911.

Simultaneously with the planning of the apartment building at number 26, the adjacent plot of land at 24 Ilka Street has also become a target for real estate development. This plot was earmarked by the House Building and Developer Bank for the construction of a condominium. The bank was one of the first representatives of the emerging trend in Budapest, which put condominium development on a commercial basis. It was founded in early November 1909 by a group of private officials with a background in finance. The company looked to the 'Tűzhely' as a model to follow, copying its activities in many respects. It also had the personal connections to do so. One of the founding members, Zsigmond Kölcsey, was the secretary of the 'Tűzhely' in 1909 (BFL VII.2.e Cg. 1342. Application for entry, n.d.), and Ulrik Strasser, the technical adviser and architect of the 'Tűzhely', also worked as a designer for the House Building and Developer Bank, and even became an investor in two condominiums organized by the bank, subscribing for shares. In early 1910, he was able to switch between the two organizations, as by January he was on the bank's engineering board, while he disappeared from the 'Tűzhely''s borard (A Családi Ház [The Family House], May-June 1909, 11; A Családi Ház, January-February 1910, 9; Házépítők Lapja [House Builders' Gazette], January 1910, 5; Házépítők Lapja, May 1910, 6).

The bank had ambitious plans for the condominium business. In the year and a half or so that it was in operation, they were planning on building twenty-five condominiums in Budapest. However, their momentum was shattered by the calamities that hit the building industry in the summer of 1910, and by the autumn of 1911 they were in bankruptcy. Only four of their planned houses were built, but even of these only two were organized as condominiums, while the other two became tenement houses. One of the former was the house at 24 Ilka Street, the plans for which the bank published in its advertising publication, Házépítők Lapja, in February 1910.

The property at number 24 (under the old parcel number 2628/b) belonged to the Maloschik family at that time and extended undivided to Stefánia Road, and was not yet separated by a street from the neighboring property at number 22. At 32 Ilka Street, the condominium of 'Tűzhely' had been under construction for a year. This fact may have been a guiding factor in the choice of location for the bank, which in many respects had followed the path paved by the Association, and this was further reinforced by the formation of the house-building cooperative at number 26 in May 1910. Zsigmond Kölcsey, who was the personal link between 'Tűzhely' and the bank, was a founder and board member of this condominium. The link between the parallel developments was also shown by the fact that the designer of the cooperative house at 26 Ilka Street, Ármin Krausz, most probably adapted the plans of Ulrik Strasser for the condominium of the House Building and Developer Bank under number 24 with its connecting courtyard.

The condominium envisioned for the plot at number 24 would have been part of a larger development. The bank's idea was to acquire and subdivide the land between Ilka Street and Stefánia Road, expecting it to be bounded by a new street to be opened from 22 Ilka Street. Their idea for the development was first published in their advertising magazine in February 1910. On the property, which was divided into three plots, they envisaged, in accordance with the zoning regulations, a multi-storey apartment block on the corner plot on Ilka Street and a villa condominium on each of the other two plots, with two apartments per floor - on the mezzanine, first and second floors. The bank began by promoting the condominiums as a new product in the capital's housing market: 'There are very few condominiums of this kind in the capital, and none on the Pest side.' (Társas-villaház (I. számú) a Stefánia-úton. [Villa-condominium (No. I) on Stefánia Road.] Házépítők Lapja, February 1910, 12.)

The plan of the corner building, drawn up by Ulrik Strasser, relied on the villa developments of Stefánia Road with its undeveloped garden strip along the rear plot boundaries, just like the houses at number 26 and 32. The building up of the garden cottage plots on Stefánia Road was imposed by the municipality itself when it issued the building permits, stipulating that 'no solid fence walls may be built on the line between Stefánia Road and the adjacent cottage plots' (BFL XV.17 .d.329 32619. Building permit for the three-storey tenement house of Pál Kertész, 19 March 1910). Strasser also planned a rear facade with garden-facing apartments, similar to the other two houses. At the same time, the garden courtyard at 26 Ilka Street, adjacent to the courtyard of the neighboring building, which was left open to this plot, was synchronous with the residential building at 32 Ilka Street designed by Dezső Bán. However, the narrow side connecting courtyard created in the house at 32 Ilka Street was not necessary for the corner plot.

Just as in the period before the First World War the condominium projects in Budapest were mostly limited to a single plot, in Ilka Street the construction was carried out plot by plot. However, the trend towards condominium development seems to have had an influence on the choice of properties for condominiums. However, even if there was a demand for condominiums in a small area, and even if the land was not yet parceled, development stopped at the plot level and could not cover a larger area. Linkages could be established at the level of the development, but could only be established on a contingent basis as a result of the construction on a plot-by-plot basis.

Ágnes Nagy (Translation from Hungarian: Barbara Szij)

(August 2024)