Everyday life in the tenement system: the moving of a middle-class family in 1909

As the concept of homeownership emerged on the horizon of housing in Budapest, a new alternative to renting began to take shape in terms of accessing housing. The promotion of condominium construction was built on emphasizing the advantages of homeownership over the disadvantages of renting. Proponents of the new idea saw the main virtue of homeownership compared to renting in the liberation from paying rent and the threat of eviction. They contrasted the vulnerability of constant rent increases and the threat of eviction with homeownership as an inheritable asset, which not only frees one from the burden of paying rent but also constitutes personal property, providing secure shelter under all circumstances, even for heirs in the event of death. A typical element of the propaganda in favor of homeownership was the comparison of the monthly expenses for renting and owning a home, which always tilted in favor of homeownership, as well as the emphasis on its inheritability: “Even the most modest family spends at least two to three hundred crowns a year just to have a roof over their head day by day, week by week, or – horribile dictu – month by month. And why all this? A single critical week or month, an illness, or unemployment is enough to expose a family that has paid rent punctually for decades to homelessness. This amount of money, thrown into the air, with which under more humane conditions, a person could accumulate capital and buy a lifetime of peace for themselves, at least sparing themselves from the perpetual fear of homelessness, in our case only secures our existence temporarily.” (Házépítők Lapja, 1 January 1910, 4.) The housing issue, which served as fertile ground for the condominium concept, had by the early 20th century come to be identified as a middle-class issue in addition to being a problem for workers and the lower social strata.

The construction of freehold flats that began in Budapest in 1907 had barely made the presence of this new form of housing noticeable in the city by 1910, since there were only six condominiums at that time. Housing conditions in the inner areas were defined by the rental housing system. This system was flexible enough to adapt to changes in family and household structures that came with life cycles: the transformations in a household due to aging or family events could be quickly accommodated by moving between rental apartments. The anomalies that fundamentally disrupted the housing mobility processes were brought about by the fixed property circulation introduced during World War I and the 1920s, that is, the system of government intervention in the housing market. On the other hand, the transformation of family composition within the framework of this rental housing system was also associated with extreme vulnerability, affecting the middle class as well. Such a circumstance could arise from the death of the family’s head, i.e. the husband, who was most often the sole breadwinner in a middle-class family, leading to the complete existential vulnerability of the housewife. This was the situation faced by the Bugsch family, where the death of Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch, a forty-four-year-old dentist, in May 1910 after a long illness, resulted in the emotional and existential collapse of the family with young children. The family tragedy was further compounded by a move, as the family with three children had rented a new, larger apartment in the autumn of 1909, which not only lost its function after the father's death but also became unsustainable. Dr. Bugsch's unplanned medical treatment in Dresden, which coincided with their move in the autumn of 1909, shifted the communication between husband and wife to correspondence. The letters exchanged in the second half of October 1909 accompanied the days of the move, giving us insight into a typical situation of middle-class vulnerability within the rental housing system. Additionally, these letters offer a glimpse into the contemporary framework of moving between rental apartments, detailing the expenses involved, the transport of belongings, and the difficulties surrounding the renovation and setting up of the apartment.

In the summer of 1901, Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch, a dentist born in Igló and in his mid-thirties, moved his home and practice from Lipótváros to the downtown side of Vámház Boulevard, at number 4. This move was likely related to a decision concerning his practice. As the first oral surgeon in the capital, the highly trained dentist's reputation was already well established by then: among his patients were members of the artistic elite and Archduke Joseph. His new residence also played a key role in his marriage three years later. His future wife, Lujza Nyárasdi, fifteen years his junior and only twenty years old at the time, had already been living with her parents for a decade in the apartment building across the street at 5 Vámház Boulevard. Her father, Dr. János Nyárasdi, was a judge on the Court of Appeals, and her mother was Ilona Havasi. From the autumn of 1903, Dr. Bugsch, who had become notable enough to catch the attention of the Nyárasdi family after moving across from them, became a regular guest at the Nyárasdi household. To demonstrate the seriousness of his intentions, he made his first official visit to their home in October 1903: “Yesterday, Bugsch had dinner with us for the first time, in the company of Margit and Iván; since then, he has sent us a hare he shot and has visited repeatedly, conveniently forgetting to return home for a good while [...].” (BFL XIII.72, letter from Mrs. János Nyárasdi, née Ilona Havasi to her sister, Jolán Havasi, 16 October 1903) Dr. Bugsch and the Nyárasdi family's apartments facing each other played a prominent role in their courtship, almost taking on a role of their own. The Nyárasdi girl, who had entered the marriage market, playfully referenced her previous relationship from two years earlier with a photograph taken in 1899 from their opposite balcony. It depicted the Nyárasdi family and their guests with the inscription: “Greetings from an unknown Vis-à-vis.” Now, the playful invisible spatial connection was immortalized in words when Dr. Bugsch forwarded a letter written by his sister and addressed to Lujza Nyárasdi as her future sister-in-law, but mistakenly sent to him due to not knowing the Nyárasdi's address: “Upon returning home, I found my sister Ida's letter with the address for you. Indeed, I am guilty that the envelope has such a peculiar color, as she could hardly have written, ‘to Lujzácska who lives across from Dr. Bugsch, the dentist’.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter of Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch to Lujza Nyárasdi, 29 February 1904)

The engagement took place in early February 1904, and the wedding followed in early August. With the engagement, they were given the green light to start thinking about and preparing for their new shared apartment. The groom wasted no time: around the time of the engagement, he wrote to his fiancée that although the apartment above theirs could be rented out from May, he didn't see it as a good choice because he didn't want to separate his practice from their living space. Therefore, they needed to continue searching for another apartment: “I could rent the apartment above mine by May, but honestly, it would still feel too far from me. I would feel like a cobbler who goes to the shop and opens the iron shutter. I don't mean to disparage cobblers; every honest livelihood is respectable. However, I think we will live elsewhere after all. It bothers me that because of the cheese shop, my apartment always has a peculiar smell, and ventilation doesn't help here.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch to Lujza Nyárasdi, 6 February 1904)

However, due to their clientele, it was clear that they needed to stay nearby, and the idea was only strengthened by the proximity of the Nyárasdi parents. Two weeks later, they had already secured a new apartment, as proudly indicated by the dentist in a message sent to Lujza Nyárasdi: “Dr. Bugsch's apartment, 4 Baross Street 2nd floor, apt. 10.” He likely quickly signed the lease so that their new home would be ready after their wedding planned for the summer. However, in the months leading up to this, he remained in their Vámház Boulevard rental, although he was the first to move to the new flat around the time of the wedding. Lujza Nyárasdi's belongings were only transferred later, and her parents prepared the apartment for them during their honeymoon.

The couple's shared apartment at 4 Baross Street was just a few corners away from their previous residence on Vámház Boulevard. They rented a four-bedroom apartment with a maid's room on the second floor of a tenement house with two courtyards built by architect Imre Steindl as his own rental property in 1897–1898. Their first child was born here in 1905, the second in 1906, and the third in early August 1909, which marked the expansion of the family to five members. This event prompted thoughts of moving five years after they had moved in, as their apartment had become cramped and uncomfortable: “I am going to be nostalgic about this apartment; often a strange feeling comes over me, despite all the complaints we've had about it.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Mrs. Gusztáv Bugsch, née Lujza Nyárasdi to her husband, 23 October 1909) With three young children, a dental practice, and the family's hunting dog, they no longer fit comfortably in the four-room apartment. Renting the larger apartment (apt. 9.) next door, which had three more rooms and became available, seemed like an ideal solution.

The opportunity for internal relocation within the building arose through the Forster family, who rented the adjacent street-facing apartment on the same floor. This situation allowed for a multiple apartment exchange within the house, similar to the Bugsch family's arrangement. The Forsters, like the Bugsches, remained residents of the building. They may not have just been neighbors but could have had a closer acquaintance, especially since Forster József, belonging to the same generation as Dr. Bugsch's father-in-law, served as a judge of the Curia, possibly establishing professional ties with Nyárasdi János, a court of appeals judge. The Forsters’ move-out in mid-October 1909 from their spacious seven-room apartment on the second floor proved advantageous for the Bugsches. This move allowed them to acquire a significantly larger apartment without disturbing their patient base due to the change in location. “It’s such a fortunate thing that we don't have to go far, it would have been particularly bad for me, so if they're looking for me, they'll just tumble into nr. 9.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch to his wife, 28 October 1909)

was aligned with the rental quarters that defined the rhythm of renting apartments in Budapest. The nearest available moving date fell on November 1st, making this period one of the peak seasons for moving in the city. However, the Bugsch family's moving plan had to adapt to unexpected circumstances. The head of the family, whose illness had already manifested itself earlier in the year, was in such a state that they decided to seek medical treatment abroad. From 13 October to 2 November 1909, he stayed at Lahmann's Physiotherapy Sanatorium on Weisser Hirsch near Dresden (Dr Lahmann's Physiatrisches Sanatorium auf Weisser Hirsch bei Dresden) to have his leg cured. The move was thus left unpredictably to his wife, who stayed at home with their two young children and a one-and-a-half-month-old baby. The inevitable separation of the spouses in the midst of the move forced them to correspond with each other, as a means of providing precise but anxious instructions for the husband to manage the affairs and the wife to report regularly on the progress of the work.

The correspondence from mid-October accompanied the phases of moving belongings and getting the apartment in order; the rental of the new apartment had already been settled earlier with the landlord. Therefore, the criteria for choosing the apartment did not appear in the exchange of letters. However, there is one letter in which Lujza Nyárasdi sketched the floor plan of the new apartment for her husband, detailing the allocation of rooms according to their functions and the corresponding placement of furniture. Her husband was quite concerned about the furnishing of the new apartment: “Well, now how will the wall of our bedroom match the mahogany furniture? […] Will everything fit well, and how will my office look?” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch to his wife, 24 October 1909)

Because of this, he asked his wife to “send me a small drawing—where will the washstand, desk, sofa, dresser, and instrument cabinet be? […] How and where are the stoves, and which rooms will receive the heat and from where?” (Ibid.) The floor plan she sent perfectly mirrored the shape and layout of the apartment according to the architectural blueprint, detailing the spatial relationships of the rooms and the placement of partition walls. Lujza Nyárasdi’s aptitude for this kind of detailed representation was also evident earlier in 1909 when she wrote to her parents, who were staying in Lussingrande (Veli Lošinj) due to her father's illness, about the results of their search for a summer house in Buda. She provided floor plans of the holiday homes they had viewed in Pasarét and on the opposite side on Labanc Street, seeking their advice to make a decision.

After their marriage, the new apartment they rented near their previous residence had to accommodate not only the typical middle-class living functions but also a dental office. The apartment undoubtedly had the typical middle-class rooms: from a letter the head of the family wrote to his wife years earlier, it is clear that the apartment included a bedroom and a dining room (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch to his wife and father-in-law, 27 January 1907). The office might have been in the courtyard room located behind the three street-facing rooms. According to the house's blueprint, this space was originally two rooms separated by a Rabitz wall, indicating its potential to be divided. It is plausible that the room was indeed split, serving partly as a waiting room and partly as the office. Besides these, there was another street-facing room in the apartment, which could have been used either as a children's room or a salon. In his 1907 letter, the head of the family mentions their two-year-old daughter being in the bedroom after lunch, which might indicate that in the absence of a separate children's room, the children were placed in rooms serving other functions in the apartment.

In contrast, in the newly rented seven-room apartment, Nyárasdi Lujza designated the following rooms: in the five interconnected street-facing rooms, she marked the waiting room, the office, the dining room – though not explicitly named, the presence of sideboards indicated this use – the children's room, and the bedroom in the last room. The back room opening to the lightwell was again designated as a children's room, while the courtyard room became the salon, at least based on the presence of a piano. Thus, the typical middle-class sequence of rooms was present: the salon, dining room, bedroom, and children's room, without a gentlemen's room, which was replaced by the two-room dental office due to the head of the family's profession. In the previous apartment, either the trio of bedroom-dining room-salon was set up in addition to the office, without a separate children's room, or the combination of bedroom-dining room-children's room was arranged by merging the salon and dining room, provided that the dining room furniture and the piano could fit into one room. The larger apartment, without introducing radically new functions, primarily served to provide more space.

Regarding the placement of the bedroom and children's room in the new apartment, the couple had an earlier idea, which Mrs. Bugsch revised with her proposed solution in the letter. Their original plan was to use the room opening to the lightwell as the bedroom and set up the children's room in the rearmost street-facing room. Several considerations could have been behind this arrangement. The room opening to the lightwell was closest to the bathroom, and although they did not open directly into each other (the bathroom opened from an inner corridor), they were adjacent rooms. Placing the bedroom in a room with a window opening to the lightwell did not comply with the hygienic principles that were already a fundamental expectation in housing reform movements at the time, which emphasized proper ventilation and sunlight for health reasons. However, these same principles were very much present in their thinking regarding the children's room. Mrs. Bugsch argued for her revised idea as follows: “Now I urgently request your response to whether it will be acceptable and if you agree that the last street-facing room should be the bedroom and the children sleep in the room opening to the lightwell? Because, i.e., while the bedrooms are being cleaned in the morning, the children will be in the one-windowed room anyway, and there is no sun in the evening and afternoon; then they could also play in the room opening to the lightwell, and being the last room, with an exit, it would be more suitable, and that beautiful furniture would not be so hidden. On the other hand, this (the last street-facing) room’s wallpaper is clean and could remain, and no one has slept in it, so it would be better for the children as a sunny street room, and we would save on repainting.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Mrs. Gusztáv Bugsch, née Lujza Nyárasdi to her husband, 21 October 1909). Although her words suggest that her husband's primary concern was the proper placement of the bedroom furniture, elements of sunlight and fresh air were also important to her. This adjustment from their original plan likely aimed to swap the children's room and the parental bedroom. Here's how the rooms were to be allocated: the children would occupy the two last street-facing rooms, with the larger two-windowed one serving as their bedroom and the smaller one-windowed one for daytime use. Meanwhile, the parents would sleep in the room opening to the lightwell.

The moving process began on October 18, 1909, a Monday, with Forster and his family moving out. Mrs. Bugsch received the keys to the apartment the following day, October 19. From this point onward, the relocation and renovation of the apartment continued until the first week of November, totaling three weeks. When Dr. Bugsch returned home on November 3, only the bedroom, kitchen, maid's room, bathroom, and hallway needed to be cleared out; the other rooms were already prepared. According to the regulations governing apartment rentals in Budapest, moving out had to be conducted gradually. The new tenant had the right to begin moving into the rented apartment on the first day of the rental quarter and had until 6 pm on the third day to take possession of the entire apartment of this size. Fortunately, the new tenants, a young couple, did not rush the Bugsch family's move-out. They planned to start wallpapering the apartment in the fourth week after the move, before their own move-in: “It's good that the new tenants haven't shown up yet, but they have time. They are a new couple settling in, they do not have to transport things, tell them that in case they get impatient.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Dr. Gusztáv Bugsch to his wife, 26 October 1909)

After the Forsters moved out, the craftsmen needed to fix up the new apartment, i.e., the painter, the chimney sweep, the plumber and the electrician, started arriving on 20 October. It was also considered to call in the vacuum cleaners for the large carpet. Regarding the painting of the apartment, Lujza Nyárasdi noted that “except for the room that is meant to be the dining room, the other three are really not dirty, so it is almost a pity to make a big mess. The only reason would be the stink bugs.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter from Mrs. Gusztáv Bugsch, née Lujza Nyárasdi to her husband, 16 October 1909) In the meantime, the cleaning and repair of the stoves, the electrical installation of the dental office, and the transfer of its equipment took place which required extra care. The main help of the wife, left alone, was her mother, who reported to her son-in-law: “we spend as much time as possible on getting the house in order. So far, our work has culminated mainly in hiring the workers, coordinating their work, as well as wining-and-dining and encouraging them; Luli [Lujza Nyárasdi] is mainly occupied by managing the children, as I am occupied by managing the flat.” (BFL XIII.72 Letter of Mrs. János Nyárasdi, née Ilona Havai to her son-in-law, dr. Gusztáv Bugsch, 22 October 1909) The actual moving started in the second week, and in the middle of the week, on 27-28 October, the pantry was moved in two days, making it the first finished room in the new apartment. Then, with the hiring of the vice caretaker, the cleaning began, after the plumbing had been completed, and they only had to wait for the paint to dry completely. It was then the cleaning of the old apartment began as well. After a week, by 3 November, most of the family’s belongings were transported. It was then that the head of the family himself arrived home from the sanatorium, as he bitterly put it, “settling into a finished situation”.

The health of the head of the family did not improve during or after the treatment. Due to a presumable deterioration of his condition, he was hospitalized the following spring, underwent an operation in April, but this did not bring any recovery, and he died on 31 May 1910, at the age of forty-four. His death left his twenty-nine-year-old wife, a housewife, with two small children, aged four and five, and a ten-month-old baby, in a seven-roomed flat, which they occupied for barely six months, and which included the dentist's office.

The untimely tragic death of the head of the family created radically new circumstances for the family he left behind. The large, high-rent home had lost its function, and became unsustainable for the widow, who had no income. The loss of her husband must have been not only a huge emotional shock, but also a complete existential breakdown. The weight of the tragedy and the shock it caused was felt in more ways than one: three more deaths in the family happened in the space of a few years. Lujza Nyárasdi's fifty-year-old mother, who had been able to help her daughter during the move, suffered a nervous breakdown after the loss of her son-in-law, which led to her committing suicide in a forest near her home town of Esztergom in the summer of 1911 (Népszava, 11 July 1911, 7). Not six months later, the youngest child died at the age of two in November 1911. The succession of tragedies within a short period of time most likely played a role in the death of Lujza Nyárasdi's father, who passed away in January 1914, two and a half years after the tragic death of his wife, at the age of sixty-seven.

In the midst of the shock, the family, left without income after the death of Gusztáv Bugsch, had to reorganise their livelihood without delay. They had to get rid of the large apartment that had never fulfilled its role, find money to cover the expenses accumulated during the father's prolonged illness and the ones connected to his death, and to ensure their daily subsistence. It is safe to say that the support of Lujza Nyárasdi's parents kept the bereaved family afloat. One of the family's first reaction after Bugsch's death was giving notice about the termination of their lease on the apartment, which was not only a financial burden but certainly also an enormous emotional one, representing the illness and death of the husband and father. On 5 June 1910, five days after the death of the head of the family and three days after the funeral, the widow's aunt inquired whether the apartment had been rented out, and in a letter of mid-June 1910 she wrote: “I am pleased to learn from your kind letter that the apartment has been rented out”. (BFL XIII.72 Letter of Ilona Havasi to her niece, Mrs Gusztáv Bugsch, née Lujza Nyárasdi, 9 June 1910) However, they did not move far, which may have been due to the urgency as well as the proximity of the grandparents: the new apartment was rented in the house opposite 4 Baross Street, but on the opposite side of the house, at 4 Üllői Road.

The flat rented on Üllői Road was a three-bedroom apartment, one room smaller than the family’s first home, but still middle-class. The auction of the husband's valuable collection of Empire and Biedermeier furniture, paintings, ceramics and other decorative objects, which took place at the end of September, played a key role in the financial settlement of their situation. The following year, Lujza Nyárasdi experienced the death of her mother here, one year later, and the loss of her youngest child a few months after that. With the suicide of her mother, the new arrangements she had been trying to establish was shattered once again, and the circumstances of her father, who had been alone and often ill for years, had to be sorted out. Complete with an alcove and a maid's room, now it was his turn to give up the three-room apartment he had lived in for two decades on Vámház Boulevard and move in with his daughter. His pension was certainly enough to provide a living wage for them. But this apartment proved to be only temporary, not only because of it being a sudden choice and its possible shortcomings, but also because of the more recent family tragedies. Within a year, the household of the widowed young mother, her two young children and her widowed, aging father had moved on. By early May 1912, they were already residents of Krisztinaváros, at 155-157 Krisztina Boulevard, as tenants of a four-room apartment with a maid's room. The new neighborhood was a radical change for the family, who had previously only lived on the Pest side. One can only speculate as to the background to their choice: the new neighborhood was far from everything they had known before. (A more obvious choice would have been Lágymányos, which was opposite Kálvin Square and was then being built up at a rapid pace.) The Krisztina Boulevard apartment then became the home of the Bugsch family for nearly three decades. In 1940, Lujza Nyárasdi moved from here to the newly built modern tenement villa designed by Farkas Molnár at 3 Pentelei Molnár Street near Vérhalom Square, following her daughter, who by then already had a family.

Ágnes Nagy (Translation from Hungarian: Barbara Szij)

(April 2024)