Lágymányos suburb plans: the Villányi Road – Elek Street detached houses estate

Between Villányi and Diószegi Roads, the area bounded and crossed by Elek Street, Tarcali Street and Ábel Jenő Street was parceled out and built on from the same suburban plan as the Átlós Road – Lenke Road site. The property complex, which also covers almost six acres, was developed as the second unit of the suburb envisaged for the Lágymányos area under the old parcel numbers 13889, 13890-13896. This time, the initiator, bank officer Sámuel Holek, together with his fellow savings bank officers and three architects, bought the land, only one block away from the property he had already acquired six months earlier, from the Herz and Beimel lot complex at the end of June 1908. Here again, Sámuel Holek took the largest share, covering almost half of the investment. The architect, Kálmán Löllbach, was also a partner in the land purchase deal for one-fifth of the investment.

The sale was immediately followed by the subdivision of the block into forty separate plots, ten plots less than in the case of the Dinnye and Kökörcsin Street block (Fővárosi Közlöny, 8 June 1909, pp. 999-1000). The size of the new plots varied between 150 square Klafter (540 m2) and 180 square Klafter (1255 m2). The predominant size fell between 160 and 180 square Klafter, which was the size of almost half of the plots. However, one-fifth were 180- to 200-square Klafter lots, so that two-thirds of the forty lots developed fell between 160 and 200 square Klafter, well below the 300 square Klafter minimum required by the building code. Only two plots were smaller than this, between 150 and 160 square Klafter, and plots between 200 and 300 square Klafter accounted for only one-fifth of the total. Three plots were even larger: two between 350-360 square Klafter and one of 415 square Klafter. A fourth plot was 500 square Klafter, but this was not designated as a house plot, rather it was annexed to Villányi Road for a public road.

Sales began more than six months later than the acquisition of the land, in mid-March 1909. By this time, a non-profit housing organization, the ‘Fireplace’ Association of Homeowners (soon to be called a Cooperative), had become involved in the sales process. The organization advertised both of the sites being developed regularly in its own newspaper from November 1908 (A Családi Ház, 15 November 1908, pp. 2–3). In 1909, 40% of the plots, sixteen in total, were sold, but sales essentially stopped there. In the following year, 1910, only three plots were sold, and in 1911 one more, while the remaining nineteen plots failed to find a buyer. The failure to sell the unsold plots was due to the general economic recession of the Budapest building industry in the summer of 1910, thus, the plots were shared by the partners.

Construction started soon after the sale was launched. The earliest plans were drawn up by Kálmán Löllbach, first for two adjacent plots in May 1909, and then for another nearby plot in June. By November 1909, the three houses (plots 4706, 4707 and 4690) had been built, although only one was granted an occupancy permit and two were refused by the authorities on the grounds that the construction was incomplete and the houses were damp. The two houses became available for use early the following year, in February 1910. Meanwhile, the design and construction of a fourth house was progressing: the plans of Kálmán Löllbach were approved by the capital in August 1909, together with the one designed in June, and the handover of this house took place in February 1910. The plans for two more houses – no longer by Kálmán Löllbach – were completed in the summer of 1910, and the construction was completed in the spring and summer of 1911, directly linked to the plots of the houses already standing at that time (parcels 4720, 4676 and 4677). During 1912-1913, another house was built next to one already completed (parcel 4678), and Löllbach also planned another house in the spring of 1911 (parcel 4691), following the beginnings of the construction in the autumn of 1910, but this house was not completed until the end of 1912. It seems that the owners originally commissioned someone else to design the house in 1910, but six months later Löllbach was drawing the plans.

However, even though work on the dreamed-of single-family housing estate began in May 1909, only half of the plots sold before the outbreak of the war, and accounting for only half of the total, were built by 1914 – a total of ten plots. As the sales stopped, so did the construction. By World War I, only a quarter of the forty plots had been built on, and instead of being built in a few years, the idea of a suburban settlement took two decades to materialize. The buildings were typically compacted, with adjacent plots on the side or rear boundaries. The building slump of the early 1910s brought construction work to a halt, and in 1912 only one new building project was started on this site. With the outbreak of the war, construction of the block then came to a complete halt until the mid-1920s. Construction of one house started or was completed in 1923, two in 1924 and one in 1925, making a total of four new houses on the estate in the 1920s. These developments were a direct continuation of the 1910s building on adjacent plots. The next stage in the realization of the colony came in the 1930s. After a renewed stoppage in the second half of the 1920s, construction resumed in 1930, and housing was completed on half of the plots – twenty plots in all – in the decade between 1930 and 1942. For five properties, however, we have no data on the time of construction due to the lack of plans and drawings.

Extending the concept southwards

The southern part of the area bounded by Elek Street, Villányi Road, Ábel Jenő Street and Diószegi Road was part of the property separated from the block bought by Sámuel Holek and his partners (old lot nr. 13905, 13906). It was located in an 11-Joch (6-hectare) area bordered by Lenke Street, Karolina Street, Elek Street and Badacsony Street (or more precisely, on both sides of the latter), and since 1895 it had been owned by the Ministerial Counsellor Dr. Ferenc Csorba. It was subdivided in 1899, when it was divided into fifty-six plots, mostly between 300 and 310 square Klafter, but the plots varied in area between 300 and 420 square Klafter, although there were some smaller plots, which could not be considered separate building plots without an addition, and some larger plots as well. The sale of the parceled plots only started in 1906 and was mostly completed in 1907. By the end of that year, twenty-five of the fifty-six plots had been sold, or nearly half of the area, and by the time the colony was established there were already properties on which the construction of a house was in the planning and permitting stage. However, the Csorba plots in the area immediately adjacent to the site remained unsold. The twelve plots in this area were in the larger range, over 350 square Klafter, rather than the more typical 300-350 square Klafter. However, a new subdivision procedure was approved for these plots in May 1909 (BFL IV.1407.b 52023/1909-III). The plots created in 1899 were rejoined to form a single tract of more than two Joch (1.1 hectare), and then subdivided into twenty-one separate, newly allocated plots. This replaced the plots that had previously been over the 300-square Klafter minimum lot size with substantially smaller plots.

The background to the reparcelling may have been the difficulties encountered in the original design of the plots and the challenges experienced during the sale. Four-fifths of the twenty-five plots sold from the Csorba estate by 1908 fell into the 300-350 square Klafter category, predominantly between 300 and 310 square Klafter. Of those sold, there were three smaller plots (around 100 square Klafter and between 200 and 300 square Klafter) and two larger ones (around 370 and 400 square Klafter), but the larger plots were overwhelmingly left behind, so that the conclusion was that plots over 350, and especially over 400 square Klafter, were unsaleable. The solution was to reduce the size of the plots, which necessitated reparcelling.

It is likely that the suburban development concept of the colony, established in early 1909, opened up new opportunities for Dr. Ferenc Csorba, as a neighbouring landowner who was stuck with land sales. Integration into the building plan could offer the promise of freedom from unsold plots, but this required a reduction in the size of the excessively large plots, i.e. adaptation to the concept of the colony. The redistribution was based on a whole new scale of plot sizes: below the 300 square Klafter minimum required by the building regulations, the new plots were between 170 and 240 square Klafter. Nearly two-thirds of them were between 170 and 200 square Klafter, and just over a third between 200 and 250 square Klafter. In approving the parceling, the capital waived the required minimum lot size, presumably in deference to the ongoing revision of the building code. The new plot sizes were now in line with the smaller plot sizes in the adjacent area to the north: the area was beginning to integrate into the concept of the housing estate. This is also indicated by the fact that, while in the advertising brochure of the 'suburb campaign' this area was still shown as a tree nursery at the beginning of 1909, a plan of the area drawn up in June 1909 already included the part of the property owned by Csorba, down to Diószegi Road. However, the business calculation did not work out, the new economic crisis from 1910 made it impossible, and the war finally stopped the realization of the project. In 1916, all the plots were still owned by Dr. Ferenc Csorba. The building of the plots in this part of the estate was only resumed in the second half of the 1920s and continued until the turn of the 1930s and 1940s.

The master plan

A detailed description of the building concept of the Villányi Road - Elek Street colony was published in an advertising brochure under the name of Kálmán Löllbach in 1909, probably at the beginning of the year. The basic element of the concept was the detached family house. The combination of houses with front and rear gardens, arranged in a closed row, but with entrances at several points around the block, fitted in with the vision of a middle-class suburb. According to the plan published in the brochure, the dwellings would be grouped together in units of two, three, four and five, with a free-standing development on the Villányi Road side as well as on the far side of Ábel Jenő Street, which was outside the boundaries of the development plan. However, this latter form of development would only cover one fifth of the plots, the majority being clustered houses, which would serve to make construction cheaper in line with the aim of the development, which is to provide affordable middle-class housing.

Although the clustered houses remained on Elek, Tarcali and Ábel Jenő Streets, the detached houses on the plots facing Villányi Road were replaced by groups of houses with front gardens and enclosed courtyards, each covering eight plots, resembling a closed courtyard block with a shared courtyard - in the case of the corner plots, there was hardly any unbuilt courtyard space left. In addition, it was not only at the Villányi Road end of the site that the density of the development increased. The two to five-unit clustered development has been partially replaced by four to five-unit development, and where double and triple units have been retained, the number of openings in the closed-row development and thus the number of clusters has been reduced, thus making the development denser and more enclosed. All this was further confirmed by the concept of the southern part of the site which, in contrast to the advertising brochure, was featured on this plan with two large, open U-shaped units without openings towards the interior of the blocks, comprising ten and eleven plots respectively. Overall, at the northern end of the site the concept of a shared courtyard with a block entrance enclosed on all four sides appeared, while at the southern end, a large block with a row of enclosures covering more than a third of the site, open on one side in a U shape, left just under a third of the site for more loose clusters of houses.

In addition to the extension of the development plan in the southern direction, the concept's transformation may also have been related to a decision of the capital, as the new plan was adapted to the façade width requirement for the Villányi Road plots. This new building detail may also have led to the modifications made to the rest of the site. The result was a move away from a combination of detached and clustered houses towards "reformist" block-building, with the use of a shared courtyard block, which had a few openings to the interior. The suburban character of the denser, "reformist" block design, which replaced the looser development typical of a villa district, was provided by low building heights and front gardens. The clear presence of the idea of a reformist block with a shared courtyard was indicated by the fact that, in the case of seven or eight plots, the rear courtyard was built up to such an extent that the quasi-shared courtyard in the block interior was essential to compensate the residents – in other words, the concept also provided for the connection between the plots in regard to the courtyard.

As for the basic architectural unit of the planned suburb, the detached house, it was interpreted differently from the single-family dwelling: rather they were small dwellings consisting of a few apartments, inhabited by families other than the owner as well. Although the Löllbach plan does not show a floor plan, he designed six of the ten houses built in the 1910s. There were no single-family houses among them. There was only one house in which the three- and four-room flats on the ground floor and first floor were presumed to belong together, since the rooms upstairs had neither a maid's room nor a kitchen. Most of the other houses he designed were two-storey and two-family houses, including a three-storey four-family type. The developers of the estate were thinking in terms of model houses: one of Löllbach's plans was designated 'Type III', i.e. at least three types were envisaged by him (BFL XV.17.d.329, lot nr. 4707). The concept was not to build single-family houses, as we know them today. According to the description in the advertising brochure, some of the houses would be two-family houses, with a rental apartment in addition to the owner’s apartment, while others would be two or three-family houses, or even four or six-family houses, which would be built by civil servants in groups, acquiring a share in the ownership of the house. (A Családi Ház, 15 November 1908, p. 6. No other sources are available on the organisation of the colony.) This ownership structure clearly corresponded to a type of condominium organisation that was emerging in Budapest in these years, even if the term itself was not used. And the aim was the same as that of the condominium movement: to solve the problems of middle-class housing that were considered to be irresolvable within the framework of the tenement system.

A combination of housing reform policies

The unique feature of the concept was the combination of the two directions of housing reform in Budapest: the multi-family apartment building and the idea of the suburb with detached houses. The two ideas equally represented housing reform thinking as opposed to the tenement housing that epitomised dense, unhealthy urban sprawl, but while one sought a break from the tenement system in the form of construction, the other sought it in the form of ownership. The idea of development was inspired by the suburban ethos, with front and rear gardens, enclosed but loose and low-rise housing, predominantly two or three storeys high, with a small number of flats, rather than large tenement blocks. In terms of ownership, the idea of condominiums, which was beginning to take shape at the time, was introduced, providing for the possibility of collective ownership by civil servants with small capital, in this case in the form of a joint-stock company, because of the financial unaffordability of the detached house. The concept of the family house used here was not the same as the built form, i.e. the single-family detached house with a garden, but carried the content of an owner-occupied home as opposed to a rented home in a small, but multi-family house, in the new ownership framework offered by the condominium construction that was intended to replace the apartment house version of the tenement system. The detached house was outlined as a variant of the condominium, in architectural terms as a type of dwelling with a small number of flats and suburban layout, unlike the multi-family form of condominium, which was more in keeping with the architectural framework of tenement buildings.

Taken as a whole, the two land parcelling and building campaigns that fitted into the vision of the Lágymányos suburb were a synchronous phenomenon with the emergence of early Budapest apartment buildings, and were part of the attempts to solve the problem of official housing in the early 20th century. They integrated both the idea of the suburb, which was intertwined with the concept of the family house, and the idea of the condominium, a form of property created by the self-organization of civil servants, which began to take shape as a replacement for the family house in the housing market in Budapest. As the concept of housing was transformed along the way, becoming denser and more enclosed, it also integrated the block reform based on the preservation of the existing urban fabric as an alternative to the suburb idea. The idea of combining alternative trends in international housing reform formed a mixture of concepts that were subsequently divergent or even mutually exclusive: the idea of the suburb, the block reform, the family house and the condominium.

Ágnes Nagy (Translation from Hungarian: Barbara Szij)

(March 2024)