A little worn, but nice house can be found at Szirtes Road 5/b. The most remarkable detail of the façade, closed by a triangular pediment, is the wood balcony. If we look slightly below, we can also see colourful embossing depicting the dragon-slaying Saint George, which the designer made with his own hands, and thus the icon might refer to his profession.
József Bubics was not an architect originally – he studied military engineering and, according to family members, the icon’s copy used to decorate the hussar barracks of Kecskemét.
We are welcomed by one of the residents of the house, Anna Juhász who is the designer’s great-granddaughter. On the house’s gate, three bells have this family name. Coincidentally, we also meet Aunt Eszter at the gate, who just arrived home from shopping – she is a relative of almost all other residents, and is also a descendant of the designer. Then the story-telling starts, which in addition to seeing these beautiful houses, is the other key element of Budapest100. The event which opens up 100-year-old houses and buildings to the public aims to help revive old memories and stories, and to learn about the history of the house and its residents.
Although the side of Gellért Hill was previously cultivated, phylloxera destroyed the vineyards at the end of the 19th century. Even until before the Second World War only a few houses stood in the whole area. We learnt that Aunt Eszter and her friends were playing hide-and-seek among the nearby blackthorn bushes even in the 50s and that there were a fair number of pets in the gardens and the streets.
In the staircase, where we found house rules from the 50s, there is a quote on the wall from the 90. psalm of a Reformed hymnal: "Tebenned bíztunk eleitől fogva, Uram.” ("In thee we believed from the beginning, O Lord.” in English)
The Second World War brought much suffering to this region but in this house – miraculously – everyone survived the battles. József Bubics’ nephew and niece wrote a siege diary about this time, details of which will also be exhibited in the house during Budapest100.
During the battles, a grenade was thrown into the house through the mezzanine chamber window, but luckily the semolina and pillows stored in the wardrobe closet caught it and so it did not explode. Similarly a bomb, which fell through the attic also ended up in one of the first floor’s beds.
From the diary, we also learnt that the residents went down to the basement on the Christmas of 1944 and came out when it was safe only in February.
This is how the grandmother, Aunt Martha, who was 14 at the time: remembers these events: “On February 13, 1944, the siege ended. In the basement, the only thing we detected was that there was a sudden silence, there were no more bomb blasts. The Russians came down to the basement the night before, they were there with us, too. After we heard that the attacks fell silent, we came out from the basement and went to the attic during the day. When we looked out of there, we saw that the Castle was on fire.”After the war, there were many oddities around the house, from which the story of Ludmilla and Jakab might be the most memorable one. The two pigs lived on a residential balcony on the first floor, where they even had their own pigpen. If we add that the upstairs kitchen was equipped with rabbit cages and that in the ground floor’s caretaker apartment’s chamber hens were scratching about, the picture of a post-war petting zoo emerges. However, in a period when food shortage was an everyday issue, this actually meant survival for the residents of the house.In the garden, in place of two cherry trees, there used to be a small tennis court. The residents and their friends often played on it and sometimes even rented the court to others.
So this house will definitely be worth visiting during this year’s Budapest100. We can learn about the Gellért Hill villa built in 1911 through the stories of the elderly residents and study the exhibited fragments of the siege diary. In the garden, picnic and outdoor games (like badminton) await visitors on 18 April.
