Houses for the Museum Staff, Sfântu Gheorghe

„Az épület történetéhez tartozik az is, hogy az eredeti programmon kívül ugyancsak a múzeum telkén, a múzeumépület nyers befejezésekor azonnal hozzáfogtunk két múzeumőri lakóház építéséhez is, melyek a maguk különbözőségében ugyanazon elvek szerint terveztettek meg és építtettek fel, mint a Múzeumépület.” (Kós Károly: A Székely Nemzeti Múzeum építése. In: Emlékkönyv a Székely Nemzeti Múzeum ötvenéves jubileumára, Sepsiszentgyörgy, 1929. 29.)

The Székely National Museum commissioned Károly Kós in 1911 to design the residences of the museum caretakers in conjunction with the main building. On the basis of the Museum’s annual reports, the two houses were completed in the summer of 1912 “so that they could be handed over as residences”. The two buildings stand next to one another on the hillside behind the museum. The one to the northeast with an upper story was made for Vilmos Csutak, and the more modestly-sized single-story one to the southwest was for Ferenc László, “through the assistance of the personal and considerable financial sacrifices”[1] of the museum caretakers. Both houses represent a low-key reiteration of the architecture of the museum, the white walls growing out of the characteristic stone base and covered with steep-pitched, compound roof shapes.

In July of 1911, Károly Kós sent the draft plans for the museum caretakers’ houses to Ferenc Gödri, the mayor of Sepsiszentgyörgy (present-day Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania). Studying the original drawings held in the museum archives, differences can be observed in comparison with the completed versions. These include for example, the small roof extending over the entryway steps on the “type A” single-story building, which was left out due to the construction of the terrace. On the “type B” Csutak house, Kós had drafted a stairway leading straight up that led to a partially open veranda instead of the terrace approached from the side. Here a hall with a stairway was built, and an original stairway design for this by Kós has also survived. The depiction of the roof planes on the plan differ from what was constructed, and in the end a less dominant dormer window was put on the northeastern side.

Both of the museum caretakers’ houses had decorative wooden plank ceilings in their entry halls and characteristic carved details can be found in the interior spaces. Today, the museum operates in both buildings.

[1] Csutak Vilmos: A Székely Nemzeti Múzeum alapítása és gyűjteményeinek ötvenéves fejlődése. In: Emlékkönyv a Székely Nemzeti Múzeum ötvenéves jubileumára, Sepsiszentgyörgy, 1929. (12.)