Calvinist Church Marosvásárhely

A design competition was announced for the planning of the church; it is not known whether Kós’s design was produced as a direct commission or as an entry for the competition. The church was not built, citing financial difficulties. In a letter written to Vincze Géza on 22 December 1957, Kós Károly stated the following (at the time he was working on the Marosvásárhely church design):

“…It is a beautiful but difficult task, because the plot is narrow and there is a need for as spacious a church as possible. Next year, the brethren will also build one of my earlier church designs in Székelyföld /Siklód/.”

Kós prepared two design proposals for the small, roughly square site. Because of the steep slope, the architect was able to provide a basement beneath the entire building. Both proposals include a church with a semi-detached tower. In one case, the tower stands beside the church’s gabled end façade and forms part of the street frontage: access to the church is from the street via steps and a corridor connecting the tower to the church. Staircases leading to the upper and lower levels are located within the tower. This proposal presented a raw and dynamic façade toward the street, where the verticality of the main façade is counterbalanced by the buttresses of the side façade and by the columns forming the narrow side aisles of the interior. The architect drew this first alternative in two variants; of the two, the more articulated version provided side lighting for the central hall through high horizontal window bands, and the tower was further accentuated by additional small turrets favored by the architect. In Kós’s second proposal, the church was placed parallel to the street and set farther back, while the semi-detached tower remained on the street front, functioning as the main entrance.

Interview excerpt with Bustya Dezső, in: Sándor Kibédi Varga, “What Is a Church Worth If It Is Hungarian? With Faith and Ten Fingernails,” Kurír, 24 December 1991, p. 19.

– Let us perhaps begin at the beginning. When did the idea of building the church arise?

– From the turn of the century until 1957, there were only two independent Calvinist congregations in Marosvásárhely: the Fortress Church congregation and the Small Church congregation. Then a third was established, the Lower Town congregation—ours. I note in passing that there are now nine Calvinist congregations operating in the city. The first Lower Town pastor was Barabás Benedek, who already had a church design prepared in 1958, specifically by Kós Károly himself. Fundraising was also started, and a plot of land was even purchased. But nothing came of it. Someone was always putting obstacles in the way…*