Wekerle Workers’ and Officials’ Housing Estate (Central Square) Master Plan; two apartments and connecting bridge

This housing estate conceived by the Wekerle administration in 1908 was one of the largest of its kind in Europe and was constructed with the character of a garden city at a site that was then outside the border of Budapest, but now is part of the capital city. The Hungarian Royal Ministry of Finance announced a competition by invitation at the beginning of 1912 for the development of the central square of the Kispest state workers’ estate, the present-day Wekerle Estate. Károly Kós won the competition to prepare the general plan, and the buildings at numbers 2 and 3 are also his work. The architect travelled home to Sztána (Stana) in the fall of 1913, handing over the supervisory work to Zoltán Tornallyay.

Kós further adapted the arrangement of medieval Transylvanian cities in his plan. Of the eight roads entering the square, he made a gate-like arch over Hungária Road that runs east-west, thus reinforcing the enclosed nature of the space. The variety of buildings with a uniform scale create an enclosure for the square since the different architects designed the individual buildings in accordance with the recommendations of the lead planner, Kós. He supervised the design of residential buildings neighboring his own by Zoltán Tornallyay (building no. 1), Lajos Schodits and Béla Eberling (building no. 4), as well as the one on the opposite, western side of the square by Dezső Zrumeczky (buildings nos. 10-11 arching over the street). The development of the square continued in 1926. The buildings of the second phase, on the northern and southern sides, were constructed according to the designs of Dénes Györgyi, Valér Mende, János Prokisch, Gyula Haász, Béla Málnai, and Gyula Wälder (buildings nos. 5–9), Béla Barát and Ede Novák (12–13), and Elemér Wachtel and Béla Heintz (14–15). The final project was the construction of a Catholic church.

The arrangement of the residences in the buildings designed by Kós, which were located on either side of Hungária Road running into the main square, was similar to the general ground plans of that time, where the rooms faced the street and the toilets were in the back along the courtyard. The balance of the otherwise asymmetrically composed western façade is provided by the high gables, the gateways on the sides surrounded by triangular pediments clad in stone, and the double entryway for the shops, which has a stone surround. A closed balcony with a carved wooden structure on building no. 2 and a protruding wooden balcony on building no. 3 connect to the bridge spanning the street. The bridge is recessed back from the façade line and is covered by a gable roof. A rustic stone base runs along the entire façade of the buildings. The fenestration on the ground floor is polygonal or arched, while the windows on the upper floors are all rectangular. There is a small garden in front of the central recessed section of building no. 3. The wrought iron railings in the staircases and along the gallery corridors in both buildings were made according to the designs of Károly Kós. The attic spaces were developed for occupation at the beginning of the 1990s.