VOICE
Lifestyle 31
american chamber of commerce in hungary
András Török’s Budapest Seven Photos of Old Budapest, from the Fortepan Communal Archive
F
ortepan (www.fortepan.hu) is a recently launched online private photo archive. You can browse 4,973 images at the moment. Freely downloadable, you can choose People, Objects, Venues and All Categories. The initiators, Ákos Szepessy and Miklós Tamási, historians at OSA archives, plan to add more photos, and will accept offerings from members of the public. They also plan to categorize the archive later. A monumental collection of everyday life in the 20th century, I have picked seven Budapest-related images, to give you a sample. at it was not s! What a pity th bridge, and also wa ge id Br th be r e original Elisa need for a wide How beautiful th inal form. The reason was the s all over Europe. ig 60 or 19 e e th th in in emic rebuilt sm - a lethal epid raging moderni
the re crowded, all ard. All trams we res that the “young ev ul Bo nd ra G cla 50s, on dly de e time in the 19 Plan. The overthe front. It prou Tram No. 6, som d star and the notice board on r the success of the Five Year peared on the fo ap re st e rs time. Note th e doing their be ’70s and the ’80s, as more ca akhanovists) ar workers” (i.e. St trams slowly diminished in the s. lem e crowding on th entirely different kinds of prob g streets – causin János Horvay w as Kossuth Square a specialist of Kossuth statu es ment of The Fa in 1927. The sculptor presente . This one was unveiled in ll. d “pessimistic, un In 1951 the Communist gove the cabinet at the moworthy” statue. rn Dombóvár, a sm Luckily, it surv ment had it removed, as a iv broken up into all town in southwest Hunga ed and is now in a park in ry, although th individual piec e group has be es. en
This is a May D ay Stalin statue, in parade in the first years of the th 19 worthy here is th e top right corner (and destroy 50s – this is evident from the ed not forced to pr at these people seem to be genu on 23 October, 1953.) Noteetend so. But th en why did they inely interested in the parade, not join the mar ch?
been taken? And did the little oasis of Where could this photo have possibly in front of it, as happened in the last built open space survive, or was a block g adult classic published in 1907? pages of The Paul Street Boys, the youn
there used to be red stars everywhere. Not just on the façade of the Even elderly people nowadays tend to forget that during the Communist period in typical Orwellian doublespeak: “Eternal Glory and Gratitude to the says, sign The trams! on even and , Eastern Station, but on the National Museum !” Liberator Supporter of Our Independence, the Soviet Union, our
(?) cable with such ferocity? Are these Why do they have to pull that telephone passers by stopped in the street and them of most were people professionals, or front of Rózsavölgyi bookshop. The othasked to help out? As evident, we are in for Leitersdorfer, Imperial and Royal er shop space (now a pharmacy) was built designer of the block, Béla Lajta. ng Court Tailor, the father of the trend-setti