Studio apartments in turn-of-the-century Budapest
The recently unified Hungarian capital of the end of the 19th century, like the North American and Western European cities, attracted a new workforce, including a large number of single people (both workers and middle class). A more accurate picture of middle-class single men living alone for long periods of time within the rapidly growing population can be obtained by analyzing more general historical statistics, as well as information from apartment advertisements and apartment floor plans. At that time, single women in the capital who were visible/perceptible in the statistics could not yet be considered as independent tenants (or apartment seekers). For them, studio apartments (in Hungarian, their name was ‘garçon apartments’, referring to the single men that usually occupied them) were a specifically forbidden element of the city, a threat to their reputation, and it was only in the years between the two world wars that renting such apartments became socially acceptable for them for the first time.
According to the 1881 census, 1/5 of rural men aged between 26 and 30 were unmarried, compared with 1/3 in the cities of jurisdiction and 53% in Budapest. The proportion of unmarried women aged 26 to 30 was under 10% in rural areas and over 38% in Budapest. There was a threefold difference between the proportions of unmarried and single men/women aged 60 and over in the two most different regions, i.e. while in the countryside the number of unmarried men/women was around 2-3%, in Budapest it was around 8%. Looking at the data from the 1891 census, it is clear that there were significant differences between the family status of the rural and urban population. The situation of the rural population, the inhabitants of the 27 towns with jurisdictional rights, who formed a kind of transition zone between the countryside and Budapest, and, at the other end of the scale, the capital were quite different. In general, Budapest was characterized by a (relatively) high rate of people completely avoiding or postponing marriage.
A wide variety of advertisements, targeting single men and offering various household services – including housing, meals, cleaning, and furniture – provide valuable information about contemporary studio apartments in Budapest. One of the first advertisements offering a flat was the one published in December 1872 in the Vadász- és Versenylap (‘Hunting and Racing Journal’), offering a flat in the Ypsilanti House at 5 Váczi Street (today's 2 Párizsi Street) for 500 HUF a year, consisting of 2 rooms facing the street (overlooking Váci Street) and an anteroom. A greater number of advertisements seeking and offering apartments appeared in the capital's newspapers from the early 1890s.
Advertisements were placed about apartments in ‘upmarket locations’, labelled as ‘Downtown’, however, many of them were actually situated in the city's prestigious, often inner-city streets (e.g. Váczi Street, Kristóf Square, Fürdő Street, Erzsébet Square, Erzsébet Boulevard, Múzeum Boulevard, József Boulevard, Régiposta Street, Károlyi Street, Szentkirályi Street, or Andrássy Avenue). The image of upscale apartments in the city centre was probably also in the minds of the wider public, the city dwellers, as in November 1896 the police arrested a ‘notorious gang of thieves’ who ‘targeted upscale apartments as their base of operations’, including József Boulevard, Váci Boulevard, Sas Street, Egyetem Street, etc. Bernát Schwimmer, a twenty-two year old ‘tramp without lodging’, his brother Manó Schwimmer, a twenty-six year old peddler, and ‘the mother of the illustrious siblings’, Mrs. János Schwimmer, née Jetti Marmorstein, a fifty-nine year old roasted chestnut vendor, committed about thirty thefts worth 3000 HUF in the flats of their victims (e.g. Dr. Sándor Bartha or a professor named Somogyi).
In the advertisements for flats, the names of tenement houses were often given, for example the Zion Palace on Erzsébet Boulevard, the Ypsilanti House on Váczi Street, Tüköry Palace, or Count Károlyi Palace on Zöldfa Street (10 Zöldfa Street, later 10 Veres Pálné Street). In the case of less prestigious addresses, such as a flat advertised near Népszínház Street, the unfavorable location was compensated for by the mention of the tenement's occupant, a person of high social prestige, by the remark ‘in a house where a doctor had lived for 20 years’. The question arises as to what was then considered to be a ‘studio apartment’ by landlords and tenants. Most advertisements offered two-bedroom flats with separate entrances from the staircase, but three-bedroom flats were also common; one-bedroom flats were rarely advertised.
In the 1890s (typically from 1893-1896), most people wanted to rent two-room studio apartments with bathrooms in the ‘liveliest part of the town’, and many advertisements preferring a temporary solution between a room and a flat appeared at this time, such as the 1896 advertisement for a ‘clean, street-facing room with two windows, a hall, or a kitchen suitable as a hall’.
In the advertisements for apartments, kitchen space was barely mentioned, in eight cases the advertisers mentioned bathrooms belonging to the apartments, and three times the use of a shared bathroom. The absence of a kitchen in such apartments became increasingly common by the end of the 19th century. In 1889, the architectural writer Gyula Kolbenheyer, in his article on domestic rooms in dwellings in the journal Gazdasági Mérnök (‘Economic Engineer’), described the kitchen as 'the indispensable part of every dwelling except the studio apartment’.
Flats without a kitchen, but with a bathroom were certainly already built in the new apartment buildings in Budapest at the turn of the century. An example of this can be found in the case of the flats of the “Zion” Association advertised in the spring of 1895 in the tenement building at 26 Erzsébet Boulevard / 27 Kertész Street, by analyzing the surviving building and flat plans. The advertisement does not indicate the size, coast and facilities of the rental property, nor is it clear whether it was a flat or a room. However, it can be reconstructed from the floor plans that a two-bedroom apartment, facing Erzsébet Boulevard, was constructed both on the 3rd and the 4th floor of the apartment building, which was completed in the year before the advertisement appeared. These were accessible from the staircase, also including an elevator, and consisted of an entrance hall, a toilet, a bathroom and two interconnecting, street-facing rooms.
Among the advertisements for flats, there were often offers where the space could be used for several purposes, for example, in the summer of 1885 in the Budapesti Hírlap there were advertisements for flats suitable for ‘offices and workshops’, while six years later there were also advertisements for rooms suitable for ‘shops, offices, or doctor’s office’ at the same address. Several advertisements also specified the desired tenants, who were almost always ‘fine and intelligent gentlemen’ (in one advertisement, ‘childless couple’ was added to the list of possible tenants), and sometimes the tenants were specified alternately according to the location of the flat: doctors were preferred to rent near the Üllői Road Clinics, and in the city center, representatives, lawyers and doctors were preferred. In several apartment advertisements, the same rental property has been advertised as both an apartment and a room, or, in a somewhat vague formulation, as both. The buzzwords in these ads were ‘with separate entrance’ or ‘entrance from a separate staircase’. Similar to the well-known strategy of widowed women or impoverished middle-class families to increase their income, the advertisers of the 1 or 2 ‘bachelor rooms’ or ‘studio apartments’ which could be separated from the other rooms of a larger apartment, were often childless young couples who offered their single tenants boarding besides accommodation (interestingly, no widowed woman appeared as a landlord in any of these advertisements).
The best example of a detached bachelor room in the transition zone between renting a room and renting a small flat is a studio flat (or a room) advertised in the Pesti Hírlap in 1898 at 6 Szentkirályi Street. ‘A comfortable studio apartment, two elegantly furnished rooms with two interconnecting doors, with separate entrance from the staircase, possibly with fine boarding, for a childless family, for one or two intelligent gentlemen, near the clinic [the Üllői Road Clinics] and the technic [the Technical University], to be let individually. 6 Szentkirályi Street, floor I, [apt.] 11.’, the offer read.
At the time of the advertisement, 6 Szentkirályi Street was a newly completed three-storey tenement house built in 1897, with two courtyards and two staircases. The builder was János Hulitius and his wife, the master builder József Jahn. Three flats on the first floor of the building met the conditions specified in the advertisement, which at that time had three rooms, a kitchen, hall, pantry and closet. Each of the three apartments was designed with a room at one end, a kitchen, hall, pantry and closet at the other, and two rooms with separate access from the rear staircase corridor. The childless family in the advertisement was trying to rent out these two separate rooms as a room for 1 or 2 tenants or as a separate flat. There was no bathroom in this flat, only in the large 4-6 bedroom flats facing the street. The building was modernized in 1934 by the then owners, and the rear courtyard flats were converted into several smaller flats and bathrooms were added. The three three-room flats listed in the advertisement were then subdivided, following the pattern of use that had been established half a century earlier, one of them becoming two studio apartments (the third room had already been added to the six-room flat facing the street as a seventh room). The studio apartments were arranged in a 1-bedroom-hall-bathroom-kitchen layout, accessible from the rear staircase and the front courtyard corridor.
A few advertisements provide information about renting costs in Budapest at the end of the 19th century (the price was rarely given in the ads), for example in 1872 in the Ypsilanti House on Váci Street the rent was 500 HUF per year for a two-room, street-facing apartment. In 1899, three-room apartments at 10 Régiposta Street cost 300 forints, while in Váci Street, they cost 260 forints. A one-room, courtyard apartment near the Nyugati railway station was advertised for 180 forints. A more accurate picture of room and flat prices in Budapest at the turn of the century, and of the society of 'room-renting gentlemen' and flat dwellers, can be found in an article published in the Pesti Hírlap in 1881. According to the author, at that time it was possible to rent ‘a room with a separate entrance’ for a month in the capital for 20-25 forints a month, or 300 forints a year. Therefore, the monthly-paid rent for a room added up to the cost of a two-room flat. The article surveyed the society of the inhabitants of the monthly rooms, and apartments in the capital of the time, who belonged to the same group: in addition to the well-to-do young students, he included ‘the countless young doctors and lawyers, the many different clerks, the thousands and thousands of state, ministerial, railway and municipal officials, the employees of banks, mills, joint-stock companies and large trade companies…’. According to the author of the article, these tenants earned between 1000 and 1200 forints a year, and up to 2000 forints if they also received housing benefits, which they could have used to rent an independent apartment if they had saved a little instead of ‘the mania of not marrying’. However, it is worth treating the conclusions of the columnist with some criticism. The 1000-1200 or 2000 forint annual salaries, which were supposedly easily earned by the masses, did not correspond to the reality of the times. In 1887-1888, the average salary of civil servants in Budapest was 1033 forints (with huge variations, of course), but among teachers, only secondary school teachers earned 1000 forints or more (the average salary of elementary and upper elementary school teachers was 454 forints and 559 forints, respectively, and 785 forints for civil school teachers).
It was probably not only their modest earnings that prevented the single intellectuals and young professionals in the capital from renting a suitable apartment: newspaper advertisements for agents looking for flats suggest that studio apartments were a scarce commodity in the rental market of the time. Some hotels also offered rooms and apartments for month-long stays for tenants during the period. In 1897, the Hotel Stefánia on Murányi Street and the Hotel Europa on Nádor Street advertised ‘monthly rooms and studio apartments’ for rent ‘on a monthly payment’. In the former, the monthly rooms were sold at a rather cheap rent of between 6 and 30 forints per month (72-360 forints per year). Also at the Stefánia Hotel, 24-hour ‘bachelor rooms’ were advertised from 70 kreuzer to 1 Ft 20 kreuzer, with service.
In addition to advertisements offering studio flats and/or rooms, a large number of advertisements for the supply of single tenants, specifically reflecting their needs, appeared in the capital's press in the 1890s.
Single male tenants were offered (and sought) room and boarding in ‘honorable homes’, ‘at childless couples’, often with mention of religion. In many advertisements, widows, ‘elderly ladies’, ‘widows of estate officers’ offered housekeeping and cleaning services. Occasionally, single male tenants also sought widows and childless couples for housekeeping in exchange for housing and a small fee. In other advertisements, tenants were looking for roommates to rent a 2-bedroom apartment, such as the ones below:
‘Bachelor looking for a bachelor to rent a 6-700 forint apartment from November.”
‘Looking for a solid gentleman, preferably a non-smoker, to live with in an elegantly furnished studio apartment consisting of 2 large rooms with bathroom, veranda and garden. View at 8 Hunfalvy Street, 1st floor, District II.’
A common phrase in the marriage advertisements was ‘tired of the bachelor life’ which accompanied a long, detailed description (with information on family background, income, position, description of appearance) of the young man about to get married, looking for a pretty bride who would fit their age and social position.
Among the advertisements for bachelors, there was no lack of offers of ‘cheap, hardly used’ bachelor furniture (considerably less frequently, but such furniture was also sought), most often ‘complete furnishing of studio flat’, occasionally ‘bachelor room furniture’, or ‘bachelor bedroom’ furnishings were advertised. There were also advertisements for new V furniture in turn-of-the-century metropolitan newspapers, such as the 1897 offer by Sándor Juhász, who regularly advertised in the Pesti and Budapesti Hírlap. He offered ‘dining rooms, bedrooms and bachelor furniture in all styles’ made in his workshop near József Boulevard (at 38 Práter Street):.
Sándor Steinbach, a furniture maker, was also a frequent advertiser in the capital's newspapers, and among his offers regularly appeared a patented folding ‘garçon-bed’ of his own development, which, according to its patent description, could be the contemporary equivalent of today's space-saving sofa beds (which were actually the great innovation of the 1930s): ‘The garçon-bed is indistinguishable from an ordinary theater chair, and without any artificial machinery, it can be changed at a moment's notice into a comfortable bed, fully cushioned with springy feathers’, read the ads.
The advertisements, the floor plans examined and the articles analyzed show that the at the end of the 19th century, in Budapest, there were already flats in new tenement buildings designed specifically for single people, while homes with separate entrances, quasi-apartments separated from larger flats or classified as separate flats without separation, were also present on the market for rented flats and rooms. Of the young, single intellectuals living in the capital at the turn of the century, only a few could afford the 'luxury' of renting an independent flat, even from this (scarce) supply, and most stayed in monthly rooms or in quasi-apartments with separate entrances.
János Mazsu, examining intellectuals (mostly in the capital), focusing on one-person households in the early 20th century, came to the conclusion that the majority of such households at that time were ‘indebted civil servants living in a monthly room with little hope of starting a family’. They ‘spent half to a third of a family’s expenses on housing – enough to rent a one- or two-room flat or a monthly room – and whose meagre household meant that the café or restaurant functioned as an integral part of their home, replacing the kitchen, dining room, drawing room and sometimes the study’.
It was possible to reconstruct the world of single civil servants, middle-class career starters, their housing situation, and their living conditions with the help of advertisements and articles, but little information is available about the ‘bachelor homes’ of wealthier single dwellers belonging to the aristocratic, urban elite.
One of these sources is an article published on 8 May 1878 in the Vadász és Versenylap (‘Hunting and Racing Journal’) about the newly built palace, the ‘little bachelor dwelling’ of Ernő Blaskovich, owner of the legendary racehorse Kincsem, at 12 Reáltanoda Street. With the exception of the closed ground-floor suites, Blaskovich showed the columnist around his magnificent new home, in which ‘everything is together [...] what is most dear to the heart and eyes of the owner: son Ange, son cheval et son chien.’ The concluding sentence of the text (in English: his Angel, his horse and his dog) in the article on the apartment house built for the lonely lord was a wink to his contemporaries, since Blaskovich had given the master architect and builder Gyula Bukovics a very brief ‘building programme’ (that of ‘a dwelling that should be built for [...] a lonely lord and sportsman, furnished with all the appropriate comforts, and special attention paid to the stables’), However, he built the palace not only for himself, his horse and his dog, but also for his lover, his partner, his ‘housekeeper’, the former actress Karolina Szabó. The relationship, their cohabitation, unacceptable by the standards of the time, lasted for nearly four decades.
From the published floor plans and the journalist's account, we know that on entering Blaskovich's palace, the long entrance hall opened to the courtyard which was occupied by ‘a handsome Swiss-style stable, coach house, stables and dog stalls’, while the street front of the building, in front of the main staircase decorated with ornate marble, housed Karolina Szabó's two-room (street-facing) apartment, with its maid's room, kitchenette, toilet and a small internal spiral staircase leading from one room through a blind room to the larger apartment above. On the first floor, the courtyard front was also all about horses, with a ‘horse room’, a glass-roofed inner courtyard, and a winter garden with views over the stables. Three rooms of Ernő Blaskovich's four-room suite (bedrooms accessible via the spiral staircase and bathroom on the ground floor, a hall and a writing room next to them) overlooked Reáltanoda Street, while the dining room looked out onto the inner courtyard and stables. The butler's room and a small coffee room were also part of the owner's quarters. In addition to a maid and a butler, there was a porter and a cook who lived in the basement rooms, but there was also a laundry room and a master's kitchen, from which food was delivered by dumbwaiter to the small kitchens on the ground and first floors.
Ernő Blaskovich's palace is not the only example of contemporary housing for the wealthy elite of the capital's single population. In 1895, the National Casino also felt the need to build ‘studio apartments’ for its members on the third floor of its new, luxurious downtown building, ‘following the English model’. According to the surviving floor plans of the building, there were two internal staircases/stairwells leading up to the third floor within the Casino building, from which the five apartments for rent could be accessed via passageways and external corridors. Casino members could choose between a four-bedroom apartment, three three-bedroom apartments (with entrance hall, bathroom, kitchen, pantry, and maid's room) and a 4+2 bedroom-bathroom apartment. János József Bognár, the always discreet butler, recalled in 1927 that one of the apartments on the third floor had been the victim of a redecoration project that began the year after the casino opened whose tenant did not want to move out since his lease was not up yet. In the end, the only thing that could persuade the tenant to leave was a thousand forints of compensation from the director of the casino, Baron Béla Aczél.
Based on the information provided by the reviewed housing advertisements and apartment floor plans, it can be seen that the independent housing needs of middle-class single people in the capital were met by sublets and bed rentals connected to family home units from as early as the 19th century. From the end of the 19th century onwards, temporary market solutions towards independent renting were developed, for example: the use of parts of large flats with separate entrances, which could be considered to be somewhere between renting a room and renting an apartment; the conversion of large flats into several smaller studio apartments, and the construction of some urban studio flats. However, mass access to independent housing for intellectuals/middle-class single people living in the city was almost hopeless at the turn of the century. From 1912, the capital tried to alleviate the situation of single people who were forced to rent rooms and beds in cheap suburban boarding houses by building the People's Inn on Arena Road (today’s Dózsa György Road), which was modeled on the Downtown Houses and offered 18-19 cubic meter small bedrooms for rent (in 1913, 26% of the residents were intellectuals).
From the second half of the 1920s, after the First World War, tenement house builders started to build apartment blocks exclusively with studio apartments, and in the 1930s modern tenement houses including studio apartments, which mostly provided homes for single people (by this time, renting by single middle-class women was also socially acceptable), and partly for some childless middle-class couples.
Judit Verő-Valló (Translation from Hungarian: Barbara Szij)
(May 2024)
