Index – Science – Monument to the Naval Palace in the heart of Budapest
On the World Day for the Protection of Monuments, we present a building with a special destiny, all the most important moments of the last century and a half of Hungarian history come to life within its walls. But it seems that the palace will also be able to tell us about the next century and a half, as it is being renovated and renewed today.
The Adriatic company
When Rijeka was re-annexed to Hungary in 1870, the Hungarian state built one of the most modern ports in Europe with an amount equal to today’s Paks expansion. The investment paid off quickly, in 1910 it was the 10th busiest port in Europe, where Brazilian coffee arrived in Budapest, where Hungarian flour was exported to America, or sleepers for Algerian railway construction. All of this has also provided ample profits for the shipping companies that have been built.
The largest such enterprise was the Adria Steamship Company, which was started in 1880 by Hungarian nobles with the help of a family business in Scotland.
The company already operated as the Royal Hungarian Adriatic Shipping Company, its short ships were built in one of the best British factories, and the flights visited the ports of Europe, North Africa and South America. The company also had regular flights to New York, and from 1904 even made an American emigration through Rijeka with the British Cunard. Their contract flight, called Carpathia, rescued Titanic survivors from the frozen ocean on April 15, 1912.
Soon they were launching luxury cruise ships to travel to the Canary Islands with Hungarian ships.
Palaces, magnates
The Adriatic company also had its headquarters in Rijeka and Budapest. The largest building in the city at that time was built in the Adriatic port by 1896, and the silhouette of the distant received visitors from afar. On one of the facades of the palace there are statues of sailors, on the other statues of Egyptian, Japanese, Indian and European human figures, symbolizing Africa, Asia, America and Europe. The pair of these four sculptures also comes back later, from the facade of the palace building in Budapest, which was completed in 1902.
Other elements connect the two buildings: both were occupied by the number one craft workshops of the age, such as Jungfer, Thék, Zellerin; both building up one of the most expensive properties in the country; and both were designed by an architect well known to the nobles, magnates, and aristocrats of the age. Freud Vilmos, who signed the palace in Fiume, designed a series of palace buildings on Andrássy út for Hungarian merchant and banker families, and for Meinig Arthur, who dreamed of the Adriatic palace in Budapest, the Wenckheim Palace castle, the Károlyi castle in Nagykároly, the castle of Géza Szapáry in Sorokújfalu (today: Sorokpolány). Two architects had plenty of ways to get in direct contact with well-known figures in the Adriatic leadership.
The board of the Adriatic has the best of the Hungarian economic elite. Count Géza Szapáry, just mentioned, was one of the promoters of shipping and the governor of Rijeka, and his cousin, István Szapáry, was a strong man on the Adriatic. Tibor Károlyi has been a key player and president of the Adriatic since its inception. The management of the company was full of well-known people, the celebrities of the Hungarian milling industry, military food suppliers, the outstanding economic and financial experts of the age, political actors and wholesalers. They visited the offices of the newly completed Palace, handling the company’s affairs across several continents. Several of them also lived here, and even run many of their other businesses out of the house.
“Use it for home!”
In the middle of the ornate main façade of the Adriatic Palace in Szabadság Square, an artistic depiction of the bow of the ship was erected, and at the top was a depiction of the Holy Crown. Under this, the company’s coat of arms was placed on the company’s “Use for your homeland!” with a password. This password was carried by each ship, as it was also embroidered in the company’s flag. The password was adopted in 1881, at the transforming general meeting of the Hungarian joint-stock company, on the initiative of one of the members of the board, Mór Jókai.
Mór Jókai, who created the company’s slogan, has been present in the life of the company since the establishment of the Adriatic company, if you like, as a kind of communication director and copywriter.
The end of the First World War marked the success of shipping, and in Trianon the country’s only seaport was lost. The Adriatic company became an Italian company, although its shares were listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange for a long time. The palace was emptied and was bought by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank in 1926.
The Palace is owned by the National Bank
Many bankers and financiers, affairs, and sometimes fraudsters moved into the building in the 1920s. As early as 1929, during the years of the global economic crisis, life became more and more difficult for the people living here. Even the successful cumulative star banker Bernát Bettelheim fled his suicide from his shop in the Palace after the crisis. Imre Kreiner, who opened the Ypszilon Café in the Palace in 1929, went crazy. The place of the world has been touted as the only Parisian-style café in the capital, a favorite destination for foreigners. Kreiner took out a loan to Ypsilon, but when he was unable to pay, he literally went mad and shot a divorce lawyer on the Grand Boulevard in a jealousy case, dr. József Báder, nephew of the former Minister of Justice Vilmos Vázsonyi.
At the end of the crisis, the Hungarian Commercial Bank Branch in Pest was looted twice.
The first time was in 1931, when the police treasurer, Géza Jójárt, was called to the presence of a police officer in time and the robbers were quickly caught. In 1934, however, the bank was broken into again, and the press at the time likened the incident to the world of the Chicago gangster. Several people died in the shootings, including Géza Jójárt, whose original name was said to be Schäffer, but he had Hungarianized Jójárt in the 1990s after a successful bank robbery. The bank also soon moved out of the house, and a financial institution has not rented a branch here since.
After the crisis, much of the former representative spaces of the Adriatic were given to the Association of Social Associations, which was close to government policy. One way or another, the Alliance had to do with almost the entire political elite of the Horthy era, and other well-known figures of the age, Pál Jávor, Gizi Bajor, Zita Szeleczky, and many others, also turned here. The Alliance was said to have brought together three million people from women’s associations to revisionist organizations.
After the siege of Budapest
During the siege of Budapest, the main façade of the building was damaged, and a much simpler gable roof was later built in place of the beautifully curved attic roof. The Holy Crown was never restored. Of the four allegorical statues on the facade, the injured Eastern female figure surprisingly regained its male head. After a rapid, acute, and partial restoration, a period of decades of slow decay began.
Some of the offices of the ministries that were shattered in the castle were first moved into the interior’s representative spaces, and the Department of War Detention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was set up here. Until it was denied in the Rákosi era, the Soviet Union simply could not account for the masses of the deportees, and soon the subject was not even allowed to be discussed.
Red Meteor, City Bar, Partisan Center
No wonder the symbolism of the building, which was the center of social organizations in the Horthy era, was also used by the communist leadership. As early as 1950, one of the organizations of the Red Meteor, intended to be the leading fighter in renewable mass sports, was moved here, the new sports associations based on the Soviet model – based on Dinamo, Torpedo, or Spartak in Moscow. On the ground floor, the City Espresso and Bar opened in 1957, managed by the Hungária Balaton Tourism Company.
The point for i was added by the fact that after the defeat of the 1956 revolution, the Partisan Alliance, rebuilt in the Congress Hall of Parliament, was given the representative spaces of the building. In addition, the express travel agency was moved in under the supervision of the Communist Youth Association (KISZ). This had to organize the trips between the friendly countries, they really established the property of the KISZ. Back in 1951, the capital city council set up dentistry in the building, for which a new gallery level was added on the ground floor. The day care center and kindergarten of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank operated on the upper floors of the building for decades.
Silent destruction and rebirth
The users after the nationalization remodeled the spaces of the house in many places, over time. In the 1970s, the original turn-of-the-century (!) Elevators were replaced and simple elevators were installed in their place. At that time, Bálint Hajós’ ornate wrought-iron candelabra may also have disappeared from the courtyard. Traces of World War II shots and wrecks were visible even during the renovation that began in 2020. After the change of regime, filmmakers discovered the building. Well-known Hollywood movies, such as the Black Widow that hit theaters last year, have been shot here in turn. Of course, this intensive use is not the preservation of monumental interiors either.
The building has become like a walk in the ornate spaces of a sunken luxury ocean liner.
Recently, however, the restoration of the exterior and interior spaces, the opening windows, the surviving Art Nouveau mirrors, the sea fresco in the staircase and even a complete reworking of the building’s history have begun with thorough restoration expertise. This is really rare in the most important Western European or American investments. Not only will the building be renovated, but this house will literally be saved. We have managed to collect the almost completely forgotten stories of the Palace and to publish, give back and pass on these stories to all those who want to understand and feel the essence of such a building. After all, a building is not just made up of walls, it tells us the lives of people, families, generations, companies, and if those stories are lost, the walls can no longer tell us anything.
There are undeservedly few buildings in Budapest whose history has been so thoroughly documented from construction to the present day and the book is accessible to anyone. We hope this kind of complex preservation as a model to catch as many monuments as possible for real rescue. We want that to be the case.
The author is a historian, cultural tourism economist, researcher of the history of the Adriatic Palace and the Hungarian Navy, and co-author of a book about the building published by the owner BDPST.
(Cover image: Adriatic Palace under renovation on March 19, 2022. Photo: MTI / MTVA)