Andrássy Avenue [antikvár]

"Sugánlt lay in the lap of Budapeót aó the Danube did in that of Hungary. There waó no paains by it, without it or outiide it. Nothing could challenge Sugar lit in Peót: it was the great hope of the city " (Gyula Krúdy, The Bridegroomo of Budapest) The Sugárút (Radial Avenue) of Pest, which was to bear the name Andrássy út from Its ceremonial opening on i May 1885, was the symbol of a whole era as well as the great hope of a city. The idea of creating it was first raised within a year of the 1867 Compromise with Austria, five years before the unification of Pest and Buda. Its construction completed by the National Exhibition, the avenue had its heyday until World War 1. Although it lost much of its former significance with the passing of those halcyon days of peace, Andrássy út has retained much of its mystique to this very day. The issue of developing the capital city of the nation into a European metropolis featured high on the agenda of Gyula Andrássy, prime minister of the post-1867 Settlement Era. For that reason he convened a conference in May 1868, where he made public his views on urban planning, part of which was the idea of opening a thoroughfare to connect the city (today's Inner City) with the City Park, The twin cities lying on opposite banks of the Danube had been linked by the Chain Bridge for two decades, but they were as yet self-contained legal entities. Of the two. Pest developed at a faster rate. Laws enacted in April 1848 decreed that Pest be the seat of Hungary's legislative assembly. It was here that the National Museum, that most significant public building of the Reform Age, had been raised and it was in the museum that the Upper Chamber of Parliament was housed for decades, with the Lower House built nearby by 1865 (at No. 8 Bródy Sándor utca). The country's nobility also left Buda for the sake of Pest when an aristocratic residential area was established around the National Museum with mansions built for the Esterházy, the Festetich, and the Károlyi families. The citizenry of Buda had the hills surrounding their quiet small town occasionally to retire to. The only spot offering similar refreshment on the Pest side was the City Park. But the park, which had been growing for sixty years from the beginning of the century, was only accessible via Király utca, a dirty narrow street always chock full of traffic. What Andrássy wanted instead was the establishment of a route worthy of the park, which it was meant to connect to the Inner City and Leopold Town. He envisaged an elegant avenue flanked, in the manner of the Champs-Élysées in Paris and the Ring in Vienna, with stately public and private buildings. His conviction, which was at least partially to h ' ¦ ¦ ¦ i . I I: W i ( '••.••¦. Í n: ¦ i);-: U: ¦ !i i - ¦ i ' , I