The Parliament House of Hungary [antikvár]

THE PARLIAMENT HOUSEct XLVIII of 1880 provided for the construction of a permanent Parliament House for the Hungárián legislation. The text specified that it would be erected at Tömö tér (today Kossuth Lajos tér) in the capital's f| fifth district, that an open competition would be held to select the design, and that the prime minister would implement the Act. In early 1881, a National Committee headed by Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza was estab-lished to manage the competition. Its members included representatives of sev-eral organisations as well as Miklós Ybl and his fellow architect Antal Weber.Tisza immediately acquired plans for London and Vienna's parliament build-ings, the first large, modern complexes of their kind in Europe. The detailed competition announcement appeared in early April 1882. It offered two site alternatives: one running perpendicular to the Danube, and the other parallel. In either case the structure was supposed to hug the river, with its principal facade facing the waterfront. Entrants could design in any architectural style they pleased, except for Classical Greekthe style of the Parliament House in Vienna, Budapest's great rival. Construction costs, excluding decoration, were not to exceed 4.5 millión forints. Entrants would vie for four top prizes of 5,000 forints eachthis arrangement would ensure the judges considerable leeway in making the final decisionand the judges were alsó entitled to purchase other designs they liked for 1,500 forints each. The submission deadline was 1 February 1883.No more than 19 entries arrived by the deadline. Contemporaries attributed this relatíve paucity to the deficiencies of the annnouncement and the overly complex programme.On 22 April 1883, the National Committee awarded its four top prizes to "Alkotmány I" (Constitution I) by Imre Steindl, "Patres conscripti" (Conscript fathers) by Alajos Hauszmann, "Alkotmány II" (Constitution II) by Albert Schickedanz and Vilmos Freund, and "Scti Stephani regis" (King St. Stephen's) by the Viennese Ottó Wagner in partnership with the Mór Kallina and Dezső Bernd. Of the winning designs, only Steindl's was Neo-Gothic; the other com-petitors preferred Neo-Renaissance or Neo-Baroque. Steindl devised a plan that, with its slightly broken long axis, followed the Danube's gentle curve, and he crowned the central hall with a dome.The National Committee decided on 27 May 1883, that the Parliament House should be Neo-Gothic, effectively awarding the commission to Steindl (subject of course to future design modifications). No contemporary documents have turnéd up to explain how they reached this decision. We know from a later account, though, that "the London memories of our former Prime Minister Count Gyula Andrássy decided the matter in the way that like the London Houses of Parliament on the Thames, the permanent Parliament House of Hungary should alsó be Gothic." Andrássy, a prominent member of the National Committee, had spent years in exile after the revolution in London and Paris, and the later account notes that he "insisted adamantly on the acceptance of the