Our District in Times Past and Now Nyomtatás Továbbküldés ismerősnek

Although the territory was inhabited before – proved by archaeological findings of Avar era, fortresses, relics of mills from Roman age and written documents remembering to Middle Age villages – it formed to a contiguous quarter just in the modern times. The development of town started at the beginning of 19th century, the town of Pest started to grow rapidly. Angyalföld, Újlipótváros and Vizafogó became a colourful outskirts quarter that time, where timber-yards, factories, rust-yard, somewhere plough-lands and gardens alternate with poor cottages, lower middle-class dwellings, overcrowded tenement houses, and in the tens mainly tenement-houses with small-flats which were more modern compared to the standard of that age. In the 19th century this area was recorded as outskirts, the facilities which were undesirable in the city – like cemetery, madhouse, night-shelter, powder-mill, barracks and other military institutes - were settled here.

The faster reconstruction of Újlipótváros the closest quarter to the city was commenced from the beginning of the 20th century, as a result of that this part became an elegant civil quarter by forties. From Vizafogó quarter country-like houses and poor temporary lodging blocks finally disappeared when in the eighties new blocks of houses were constructed.

Angyalföld part shows an eclectic view even today. Along the main roads and on the place of terminated factories the hypermodern buildings spring up like mushroom which are primary the centres of business life and trade. Flats built in the fifties and sixties along Béke, Tahi, Fiastyúk Streets are standing in pleasant gardened environment, its value is appreciated more and more by middle-class. OTI-block constructed in forties with its one-storied row of houses and gardens can be paid just by wealthy people. At the same time there are lots of “typical” Angyalföld-type street parts, houses which reserved their original milieu during the long decades.

In an extraordinary way our book shows the past and present of a quarter to the reader of which one part is although one of the outstanding scenic spot of the capital, but the other part is slightly known for travellers, rarely and shortly mentioned even in tourist books.

The basic principle of our edition is the comparison of past and present. In the first section of book we cite delineation on various parts of our district from the beginning of the 20th century till today. Newspapers, magazines were our primary sources, literature and publications introducing the town were in the second line. We tried to pick out the most characteristic and interesting extracts from the extremely rich material. In the second section of the album editor could hardly select the photos from the voluminous material. By the reason of size limits we could not enclose some typical point of our district like Dagály Spa and formerly Duna-beach (free section), factory building operating with different function (ELZETT, Tutto Mobili, KIKA), and we could list the examples. The oldest photos of past are from the photographic library of Kiscelli Museum and Országos Műemlékfelügyelet (National Inspectorate of Monuments), the latter ones are reserved at Angyalföldi Helytörténeti Gyűjtemény (Angyalföld Local History Collection). We can say thanks for the photos of nowadays to two prominent local photographers: most of the photos were made by László Roboz, the rest by Gábor Holczer known from the local newspaper Hírnök (Herald).

On the earliest photos we can see industrial facilities, like the former end station of horse tramway, Láng Engine Factory, or Screw Factory. We also present a picture of Margaret Island from the 19th century and some photos of Mór Erdélyi made at the beginning of 20th century. It can be seen on this latter one that Újlipótváros was an outskirts reminding to Angyalföld. From the twenties more and more dwelling houses were constructed in Újlipótváros. Among these we show the famous Dunapark house situated in Szent István Park. Szent István ring road with the building of Vígszínház and the church at Béke Square on a glass-plate picture from twenties also appears in the book.

In the decades after the war our district developed with undiminished rapidity and became one of the castle of socialist large-scale industry. We presented several photos from the period between 1945 and the seventies, because the townscape of this period has been already disappearing without leaving a trace behind. We can see the landscape of dockyard, new blocks of houses in the vicinity of Béke Road, we can observe the famous Ördögmalom (Devil’s mill), Mátyás Rákosi House of Culture or the building of Attila József Theatre, as district party centre, traffic crossing of Árpád Bridge with the blocks of houses rising in the background and the empty site at the corner of Dózsa György and Váci Roads where a little later the modern building of Hotel Volga (today Hotel Ibis Volga) was built.

We hope that our loved abode, the past and present of XIII. district, are vividly outlined relying on the cited extracts and presented pictures and the dizzy speed changes are perceptible how fast it connects this former outskirts more tighter to the pulsating artery of the metropolis.

Katalin Juhász