From renting a room to a flat. The studio apartment and life of architect Károly Hegedős in the Pannónia Street apartment building, 1934–1936

Architect Károly Hegedős created a nine-volume memoir series, each volume spanning 700–900 pages, covering his life from childhood up to the time of writing in the 1950s. These volumes are preserved in the Archives of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The sixth volume, titled Új honfoglalás (‘New Conquest’) and written in 1952, details the author’s life from the autumn of 1933 to the summer of 1939, focusing primarily on his housing experiences. This includes the extensive challenges he faced finding rooms and apartments, along with the detailed planning and furnishing of his living spaces. During this period, Hegedős, who lived alone until 1938, struggled with securing stable housing of acceptable quality while also establishing a stable existence. After two decades of renting rooms, he was cautious of high rent and housing costs but longed for an independent apartment – a place to call his own. Ultimately, he found a solution to his housing problems in a popular ‘garzonház’ (studio apartment building) of the era, where he rented a small apartment for only slightly more than what he had paid for his previous rented rooms.

Room Rentals

At the start of Volume VI, Hegedős was a 38-year-old independent architect (i.e., a freelancer) who, after spending eleven years in Romania, was trying to start a new life in the capital with only a modest professional network but a relatively strong and supportive circle of family and friends. In his initial months in the city, he relied on a 300-pengő monthly war pension from the Fischer fund for his living expenses. Starting in September 1933, with this income, he rented a room with his friend, fellow unemployed architect Iván Tabéry, in a tenement house at the intersection of Ferenc Boulevard and Üllői Road, near the beginning of Tűzoltó Street. The residential building at 3 Tűzoltó Street was a smaller apartment complex surrounding a narrow, dark inner courtyard. Though Hegedős’s room faced Tűzoltó Street, the street itself was very narrow, with the buildings opposite situated uncomfortably close. In the autumn of 1933, the three-room, second-floor apartment was home to a 70-year-old widow and her 45-year-old daughter, who had moved to the rear of the apartment into the servant’s room and kitchen after the death of the family’s patriarch. The women supported themselves by renting out rooms. Hegedős’s memories of this affordable yet depressing lodging remained bleak. He paid 1 pengő per day, or 30 pengő per month, for the room, which included bedding, cleaning, and basic services.

He had to pay the rent to the landlady two weeks in advance. Although Hegedős frequently grumbled about the shabby, impoverished condition of the apartment, he didn’t dare search for a better-quality, more expensive place due to his financial uncertainty. It was only when Iván Tabéry married that Hegedős first considered the idea of finding ‘a somewhat more humane apartment.’ At the end of November 1933, Hegedős received a substantial amount of money – 800 pengő at a time of great need, as several months’ worth of delayed war pension payments were disbursed to him. From this sum, he spent 360 pengő to buy 50 kilos of egg-shaped briquettes and 20 kilos of chopped firewood to heat his room and the bathroom. After purchasing his winter fuel supply (as heating was not included in his room rental), he realized that this expense practically doubled his rent.

During the winter of 1933, Hegedős finally secured a stable position. He was offered a job by Sándor Fodor, a ministerial advisor, at the Engineering Department of the Municipal Public Works Council, with a monthly salary of 300 pengő (net 272). Though not particularly high, this was an average starting salary for the time. With a steady job secured, Hegedős felt able to rent a higher-priced, modern room in Újlipótváros, located in a new apartment building on Korall Street. After his previous rundown accommodation, he was delighted with the clean, modern room he found through a newspaper ad. The apartment even had a telephone, which he could use for 20 fillér per call. The host family consisted of three members: the father, a stockbroker; his wife, the homemaker; and their son, a 20-something freelance journalist. Additionally, there was a fourth resident – a servant or maid – whom Hegedős only indirectly referenced in his complaints, as he does not mention her during his multiple, detailed descriptions of the family members. In this new rental, Hegedős found himself troubled by entirely different issues than in his former ‘poverty-scented’ lodgings. Here, his main grievance was the intrusion on his personal space, which he found hard to tolerate. Writing about his everyday life as a room renter, Hegedős recalled that, in addition to the gloom caused by his limited financial situation (housing and basic subsistence difficulties) and the frustration of professional stagnation (unemployment, unsuccessful design competitions), he was also deeply troubled by the bleak outlook for his family life. He considered marriage irresponsible under these conditions, as he could not ‘entice’ any woman into the shared hardship of room renting. At the same time, he had no desire, ‘on principle’, to choose a wife from a wealthy background or one who worked and could support him.

Furniture design for a studio apartment

For two decades, the architect lived in various rented rooms: in student housing in Pest, family accommodations in Bucharest and Cluj. Of all these, only his room at the Luther Home in Pest, where he lived from 1913 to 1914, held fond memories for him. He described it as the only place where he was ‘the absolute master, undisturbed if I wished to be.’

In the fall of 1934, Hegedős began to consider moving from room rentals to a studio apartment of his own. Even while still renting on Korall Street, he started designing and commissioning the furniture he envisioned for his future studio. Along with the lack of an autonomous living space, what bothered him most about his rented rooms was the worn, cast-off furniture he was forced to use. The very first piece of furniture he designed was a bookcase, which featured three open shelves at the top and a closed section at the bottom with two doors. This bookcase was used to store books that had previously been packed away at the bottom of his trunk, making them difficult to access until now. Next, Hegedős wanted to acquire a bed. In his memoir, he reflects extensively on the available solutions at the time, pondering the dilemma between an untidy, unmade bed or the uncomfortable ‘divan’ (a type of sofa-bed). He notes that the post-World War I ‘middle-class ideal of apartment living’ led to the merging of the living room and bedroom into a two-room-hall layout. This, in turn, resulted in the appearance of multifunctional divans, which could be converted daily and were suitable for both daytime sitting and nighttime sleep. Hegedős opted for this kind of furniture piece, especially since he needed a solution that could address all his living needs within a single studio room. When designing the furniture, Hegedős focused on space efficiency, as well as the future ease of maintenance and cleaning. For example, he designed the bookcase with polished wooden tops, making it easy to dust daily. He also considered making the pieces easily movable. In terms of sizing, Hegedős carefully assessed his own needs. He calculated the space required to accommodate his entire 1934 wardrobe, then designed the furniture to be slightly larger than what he actually needed.

Hegedős also planned for the potential sizes of his future studio apartment and the hoped-for subsequent apartments. As a result, he had three wardrobes made: two measuring 90 cm and one 65 cm. These included a chest-of-drawers for underwear, a hanging wardrobe, and one for outerwear. Each wardrobe was designed to fit into 1-meter spaces between windows or doors. When grouped together – uniform in height, material, and color – they filled the space of a bed or a two-meter wall section perfectly. In addition to these wardrobes, Hegedős also designed a stackable laundry basket and shoe cabinet. However, he did not have a writing desk made, reasoning that architects don’t need such furniture – what they need is a workbench and a drawing board. He later regretted this decision, as he realized, over time, that his accumulating documents would have required a desk with drawers, ‘secured with multiple Wertheim locks’ for safekeeping.

Chairs were also necessary for the new home, as the architect only had a piano stool purchased in 1927, which accompanied him from room rental to room rental. While sitting at his drawing table, he found it ‘perfectly suitable for drawing,’ but it was otherwise useless. Hegedős did not consider purchasing an armchair or a ‘fauteuille’ due to lack of money, and he had grown to dislike the Thonet chairs, which were affordable but uncomfortable. According to his notes, a Thonet-style beechwood chair at that time cost 9 pengő. His architect friend, Iván Tabéry, had bought a drawing chair from the Heisler Furniture Factory, ‘where very cheap series furniture made of beechwood was sold.’ Ultimately, it was from here that Hegedős acquired the remaining furniture pieces for his studio apartment, including chairs, armchairs, and a small table. He spent a total of 108 pengő on seating (three chairs, one cane armchair), and a small table (which cost 28 pengő). The most exciting pieces in this purchase were the truly modern-looking, new-form chairs from the Heisler system, with spring backs, canvas seats in large black-and-white checkered patterns, made of beechwood, each costing 16 pengő.

With this, the full furnishings for the new home were in place, and only the ‘luxury items’ were missing – rugs, curtains, and tablecloths. After living in many rooms with mismatched, faded, and worn interiors, Hegedős ‘developed a strong desire for a furnishing style that would feature vibrant colors and pleasant color contrasts.’ The foundation of this was, of course, the color of the furniture he designed, which he had produced by the Fischer furniture factory, a company he had become acquainted with during the renovation of the Grand Hotel on Margaret Island. The selection of textiles was made to match the ‘deep walnut brown’ color of the polished furniture set (thanks to the webbing, the beechwood of the black-and-white checkered chairs was also deep brown). Hegedős spent a lot of time ‘meditating’ on the purchase of the then-popular ‘Hungarian-woven Persian carpets,’ a decision about which his sister Ilon advised caution. These carpets were often made from poor-quality materials, with thin weaves, and were ‘made to look good’ but deteriorated after 8-10 years of use, becoming ragged. Ultimately, Hegedős purchased his ‘very good quality’ rugs from Jenő Révész’s shop on Teréz Boulevard for 135 and 65 pengő. The larger rug, as noted in his memoirs, had already worn out by 1952, the time he was writing.

Hegedős managed his self-designed furniture well, as the total cost for furnishing his studio apartment was about 1,300 pengő, while Lajos Kozma, in an article published in 1930, stated that the cost of furnishing a living-bedroom for a studio apartment would be around 2,000 pengő. Looking back two decades later, the architect was still satisfied with his ‘great achievement in life,’ his studio apartment, which he moved into in September 1934. His deep brown furniture, designed by him, and the textiles he carefully selected created a ‘pleasant, fresh, and vibrant color effect’ in the interior. The layout of Hegedős’s studio apartment, as well as the arrangement of the furniture, can be precisely reconstructed based on a drawing preserved in his memoirs. Entering from the hallway, the elongated room had storage shelves and cabinets placed tightly along the right side wall. The architect divided the room into three roughly equal parts, each organized around a specific function, with two rugs on the floor marking the boundaries of the ‘islands.’

Upon entering the studio apartment, the first third – the dining area – was made up of a dining table with chairs placed on a large rug (to the right, against the wall: a cabinet and shelves). The middle section – the bedroom – consisted of a divan, a small rug, chairs, and a small rolling buffet cabinet (with a built-in wardrobe in the wall to the right). The last third, closest to the window – the workspace – was made up of a drafting table, two chairs, and a bookshelf (with two shelves against the wall on the right). Hegedős would occasionally rearrange the furniture setup according to his mood, with the exception of the sunlit workspace corner placed by the quarter-circle window. The approach to the interior design described in the memoirs – a functional, user-centered furniture design process that considered the spatial needs of the stored objects in relation to the user's requirements – was a novelty in the 1930s.

In addition to the shift in residential architecture from the earlier focus on spacious, representative buildings to the concept of the ‘internally constructed’ apartment or house, this change also influenced furniture design. As apartment sizes shrank, the trend of heavy, ornate, sprawling furniture sets was replaced by smaller, more practical pieces. In 1935, Gyula Kaesz published a lengthy article about the history of wardrobes in the magazine Tér és Forma (‘Space and Form’), which echoed Hegedős’s earlier approach to furniture design. In his article, Kaesz argued that a wardrobe (and by extension, furniture in general) should not be viewed as a ‘decorative object or art piece,’ but as a ‘functional item.’ He emphasized that it should be ‘returned to human scale,’ with the dimensions and form of the furniture being shaped by the objects it needed to hold.

Studio apartment in Pannónia Street

Just a few steps away from his rental on Korall Street, Károly Hegedős finally found his first own rental home in the studio apartment building at 34 Pannónia Street. The studio building, completed in 1928, had a total of 101 studio apartments spread across its five floors, with 17 units per floor (the building consisted of four floors and an attic level, and on the ground floor, 16 studio apartments and a janitor's apartment were also created). Shortly after the building was completed, in 1929, the ground floor was converted into a row of shops (eight smaller stores, a pub, and a restaurant), while one janitor's apartment and a small living room-kitchen apartment for the building’s heater remained facing the courtyard. Over the next years, the building may have undergone several modifications, as in 1941, alongside the ground-floor shops, 100 studio apartments were being rented out again (by this time, small apartments could also be found on the mezzanine floor). The studio apartments could be accessed like hotel rooms, through a long corridor on each level. Each small apartment was 24-25 m², consisting of a small hallway, a bathroom, and a room of approximately 17 m².

In his memoirs, Hegedős speaks of the years spent in his studio apartment as the happiest period of his life. Furnished according to his own needs and taste, the architect perhaps enjoyed the greatest sense of freedom in managing his space, time, and resources. For the studio apartment, he paid 75 pengő per month, which covered heating and constant hot water, and an additional 15 pengő per month for cleaning services. Each floor of the studio building had its own cleaning lady, whose services tenants could use if they wished (these women were not only skilled at maintaining the apartments but also gathered and spread information and gossip circulating within the building among the residents). The floor plans show 6-7 m² chambers or closets at the end of each floor, which could have been storage spaces for the cleaning ladies. According to the 1941 apartment layouts, it seems that the cleaning ladies lived there as well (some with their husbands and children). Each studio apartment was equipped with a connection to the gas network, allowing tenants to cook on a small gas stove in their tiny (2-3 m2) entryways if they wished. Hegedős did not take advantage of this, fearing that he might leave the gas stove on and suffocate. Along with his fear of gas poisoning, his dread of gas bills proved to be at least as strong a motivation. During his first year in the studio apartment, Hegedős had to manage on a monthly salary of 272 pengő, which was enough for a modest living but still required him to be frugal. While he gave up on cooking in the entryway, he realized the cost-effectiveness of eating at home. As he carefully noted, at the Sabaria restaurant, a pair of Vienna sausages cost him 60 fillér, while three pairs of the same sausages bought from the butcher, accompanied by mustard and horseradish, only cost around 70-80 fillér.

In the first few months of the architect’s new-found bachelor life, he acquired the necessary tableware: tablecloths, napkins, plates, cups, and with the help of a coffee maker flask he received as a gift, he was able to brew coffee for himself. From then on, he dined at home and prepared his own coffee to fuel his late-night working hours, preparing designs for competitions. He converted the piece of furniture originally designed as a shoe cabinet into a rolling buffet cart, used for storing plates, glasses, and liquors, as well as wines. For breakfast and snacks, he continued to go out to the small pastry shop at the bottom of his apartment building.

Life in the studio apartment building

Alongside bachelors similar to the architect, numerous bachelorettes (single women) also lived in the apartment building. The author did not have a high opinion of them, viewing them as single women hunting for husbands. Additionally, based on a few rumors, the architect described the studio apartment building as a perfect venue for concealed prostitution. However, Hegedős’s moral concerns were overridden by financial considerations, as the studio apartment building ultimately solved his housing issue – for 75 pengő a month, he was provided with heating and a constant warm bath, which he believed he could not have gotten elsewhere in the city for this price. Among the tenants, he also took note of another group: the elderly, supported by their adult children, who, when moved into the studio apartment building, ‘don’t cause much of a stir.’

A more nuanced picture of the studio apartment building's community can be formed based on the residential census sheets from the 1941 census, recorded for every rental unit. Of the 100 rental units at that time, 64 were occupied by single individuals, and 42 by households with multiple members. The majority of the single residents were civil servants over the age of 40 or retirees, while the typically two-person households were composed of married couples, or single individuals living with a child or elderly parent. The census sheets reveal a significant number of Jewish civil servants in the studio apartment building who, likely due to the effects of the second anti-Jewish law, had lost their jobs. The census data from Hegedős’s former rental location, at 24 Korall Street, similarly highlights the mass job loss among Jewish civil servants, and the common income-boosting practice of subletting, even in studio apartments, at the time.

Of course, Hegedős’s autonomy in housing, despite renting his own home, could not be entirely undisturbed, as the existence and noises of other residents, like the sounds of barking dogs, affected his life too. The architect lived in the studio apartment building on Pannónia Street from September 1934 to October 31, 1936. His desire to move on was primarily driven by a wish for a studio apartment that was more elegant, less hotel-like, and where he could appropriately receive clients related to his architectural work. After two years, he very much wanted to leave and thus began to notice more flaws in his first studio apartment, such as inadequate heating. Finally, in August 1936, the architect gave notice for the end of his lease on Pannónia Street, effective November 1, but he continued searching for a new home in the area, not wanting to move far away from his usual café, eateries, or from his fellow designer, Iván Tabéry, who lived at the beginning of Lipót (later Szent István) Boulevard.

Judit Verő-Valló (Translation from Hungarian: Barbara Szij)

(October 2024)