Játékszer – áruház – építészet a budapesti Árkád-bazár, a vágó fivérek műve 1909-ből

Abstract

The first and only large toy store in Budapest, the socalled Árkád-bazár was built in 1908-09 according to the designs of József and László Vágó. The company that commissioned the building, Késmárky & Illés, was one of Budapest’s leading toy trading companies. Founded in 1879, it sold not only toys but also a wide range of home ornaments and furnishings. Its shops were always located along Rákóczi Road and Kossuth Lajos Street, which was one of Budapest’s foremost arteries of commerce, connecting Keleti railway station with the inner city of Pest. In 1907 the company undertook its largest investment ever, the construction of a new building to house their toy trade branch. The building to be erected was not a department store but an example of the shop-cumapartment block combination so typical of the commercial avenues of Budapest from the 1890s onwards. Above its two business levels it had four residential ones. In April 1907 the owner and his wife bought two adjoining lots at the corner of Dohány Street and Síp Street, well visible from Rákóczi Road. It was the renowned modern architectural firm of László and József Vágó whom they commissioned with planning the new building. The Árkád-bazár in Budapest was a typical multifunctional metropolitan building, with an interior arrangement determined – apart from the specificities of the building lot – primarily by the desire to maximize retail space, shop window length and the income from rents. Fire-safety considerations stressed by the municipal authorities also played a considerable role in forming the building. Like other buildings of the similar type, it was to appear in the cityscape first and foremost as a giant advertisement of the trading company housed on its lower floors. Instead of working with the routine elements of early 20th century commercial architecture József and László Vágó met these requirements in an innovative way, with unique and personal solutions to the distribution of the retail space and the composition of the elevations. In 1909 the sharp lines, prismatic forms, geometrically stylized, contrasting volumes of the Árkád-bazár were unquestionably a novelty in the architecture of the Hungarian capital, a rupture with the soft, smooth, wavy forms of the art nouveau houses so popular in the previous years. However, the most important merit of the Árkád-bazár was probably that here the Vágó brothers found innovative solutions to the very specific artistic problems of the building type: uniting the swathes of the commercial and the residential levels into one coherent composition, integrating the advertising function into the building fronts. By utilizing a few characteristic elements of early 20th century ‘children’s art’ on and in their building, the Vágó brothers not only found a truly adequate form of advertising the toy store housed in it, but also managed to endow Árkád-bazár with a certain charm and humour unique in the local architecture of the period.