Such plans were originally made in place of the Hilton in Budavár
We show everything we dreamed of for decades after the siege of Budapest.
There are few more divisive buildings in Hungary than Hilton in the Buda Castle District, as the modern block of the hotel, which recently celebrated its forty-fifth birthday, affects not only the Castle, but the entire Buda side, according to many to an unhealthy extent.
The negative opinion is justified by the dislike of the modern, who carries sculptural ornaments for a limited number of people and does not follow the articulation of historic buildings, and others believe that this building, like many of its peers, is inseparable from the political era in which it was born. so there is no place at all in the city.
Of course, the situation is much more complicated, as the winner of the house design competition of the Public Building Design Company (KÖZTI) Béla Pintér and János Sedlmayr his work was built over three years, with the Hilton environment opening its doors to the first guests on December 31, 1976, fitting into the available space, cleverly filling its 38,000-square-foot space.
When designing the façade and the rooms, which do not want to compete with the neighboring Fisherman’s Bastion or the Matthias Church, but also somewhat evoke their faces with their glass surfaces, Pintér included all the parts of the listed building in the final design, he not only saved it, but utilized it, and even presented it. In addition to 28 suites, 295 rooms, 18 catering units, as well as private rooms, the hotel can accommodate a flower shop, clothing stores, MALÉV and IBUSZ offices, and even the Tower restaurant, which Pintér placed in the medieval Miklós tower.
Few people know that Hilton, which received architectural protection in the capital a few weeks ago and now has 333 rooms instead of the original 323, was not the first idea to build a plot of land that had largely become a toothpick after the siege of Budapest, as they wanted a school in Rákosi to build in its place, in fact, for a short time in the late sixties, the plan for a smaller hotel was on the agenda. In our unknown Budapest series, we present these three plans today.
Eight centuries of history
The Dominicans already stood here after the Tartar invasion, in the XIV. At the dawn of the 19th century, the monastery and church of Buda, which also housed a college of law, were severely damaged by the Turks in 1541, and the Ottoman Empire damaged the church and its tower. Pasha Hüszrev it was used as a mosque, so after the recapture in 1686 it was restored to church property in good condition.
The same could no longer be said of the monastery, so a first food store, then a high school run by the Jesuits and later by the Benedictines, was established until 1936. The building in the other half of the block was first moved to a dormitory and then to the court chamber in 1784, which in 1849 handed over the rooms to the Imperial and Royal Treasury. Following the compromise of this institution, the Ministry of Finance took over, which will operate here until the birth of its building on Trinity Square.
After the siege of 1944–1945, only a few walls of the buildings and part of the church remained intact, and the state was in no hurry to restore them, as the rescue and reconstruction of the Nicholas Tower had to wait until 1965, with the sky around it. and between the steep walls, archaeological work was carried out until 1973, when construction of the Hilton began.
In light of all this, it is a minor wonder that there was anything to save at all.
School in the Castle
The first printing house in Hungary was brought to life 550 years ago, on one side of the square András Hess The side of the square guarding its name towards the Danube was most like a pile of rubble after the war, so it also occupied a prominent place among the plans to build a toothpick in the Castle District.
Thus, a variety of installation concepts could be made in a row, and unfortunately some of the archives of state-owned design companies have fallen victim to more vigorous waste disposal, so only one idea has survived from the early years:
He was also the chief architect of Budafok-Tétény and then Csepel for a long time Tibor Gyula Polinszky according to the folder saved by the garbage trucks before then About Pope Ince has a locked balcony and a sundial on the corner of the named square, they dreamed of a building not connected to the church tower:
This sketch may have never left the building of the design office, and in fact, there are no good plans for it – the last three plans Lajos Zalaváry (1923–2018), about which the most important journal of the profession, Magyar Építőművészet (1960/1.) Also reported.
According to the long article, he puts the corridor on the edge of the building, and the first high-rise version, like the houses in the castle, was discarded because it covered the ruined tower too much, and the second with , again the courtyard, deepened to the medieval level, was the biggest problem.
With the final version, Zalaváry dispelled all doubts, as the classrooms of the school, which left the surrounding monuments to stand out from the two sides, could be connected to the wide corridors, the medieval windows of its northern wall or the church nave that might have been completely restored could have been even more prevalent.
Gallery
Hungarian Architecture, 1960/1. / Arcanum Digital Library
Such plans were originally made in place of the Hilton in Budavár
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The layout of the two-storey, flat-roofed school building still works well today: the gym in the basement extends to the ground floor, the gymnasium, the changing rooms and the kitchen, above it the common areas, such as the dining room, the lobby, the pioneer room, the study rooms , the service apartment, and the teacher and principal ‘s room, while on the two floors the students could have found the classrooms attached to the middle buzzer.
As a playground as planned
which could have been reached partly underground, through a flight of stairs bridging a three-story elevation difference.
They didn’t stand a chance
The drawings did not have a chance of being realized, as according to various media outlets, the state wanted to move some office or scientific institute to the burnt ruins in the mid-1950s, but the plans continued to fail,
and how wonderful a hotel would be!
– predicted in January 1957 by a journalist from the People’s Choir (Népszava).
The picture did not clear up in the following years either: Népszava wrote in October 1960 that the weathered buildings in the Castle were being beautified, but nothing was happening in the area, but nothing had happened – despite asking the District I Council for advice. own company to resolve the situation as soon as possible.
In June 1963, the Hungarian Nation reported a particularly promising development, as the ruins fell into the hands of the Geophysical Research Institute, which not only prepared a study plan for the restoration, but also decided to start converting the monument into its own headquarters in the second half of 1964. . .
The ambitious plans were finally thwarted by the government, as the newspaper reported two years later, in June 1965, that the dilapidated part and the adjoining toothpick had migrated to the Museum of Internal Trade, with the aim of operating hotel should be at the foot of the Matthias Church.
The plans for the project named Mathias Rex were also signed by Zalaváry – his most important works were presented earlier – and then presented by Magyar Építőművészet (1968/4):
According to the detailed article, the designer would have demolished the frozen and burnt-out ruined walls after saving the facades of the old building and part of the Danube corner, and then built the 192 double and 15 gallery rooms and twenty on the resulting contours. , a large double or triple suite with a shared bathroom on each floor and a hotel building with a polar espresso overlooking the Matthias Church, which guests could enter through the reconstructed church square.
The plan also includes the presentation of the medieval floor and the lowering of most of the church to this level. their corner rooms would have been moved.
In the drawing above, the new building to the left of the former church would have provided catering and entertainment facilities, as confectioners, a night bar and several restaurants would have been found around the ground floor confectionery and upstairs kitchen. .
The hotel, which was to be equipped with an underground garage, was thwarted by a Hilton contract signed in 1969, as part of which the American giant, who was the first to put his name behind the Iron Curtain in the Quarter, asked for the room to be raised from scratch.
However, the wait has finally borne fruit, and Hilton has been proud to be one of the most fortunate blends of historic restorations and modern architecture ever since in the heart of the historic quarter.