2011 KISPEST - Városkalauz

The central character of Kispest became reinforced
by the handover of the north-south underground
line (metro line nr. 3), the junction points at Határ
road and at Kôbánya-Kispest managed to increase
the prestige of the district.
� Comfortable, family environment, garden city
instead of multi-storey blocks of flats, in order to
ensure that the workers moving from countryside
into the city could feel theirselves at home. This was
the main concept of the designers of the Wekerle
site; this is what Sándor Wekerle, that-time Prime
Minister was following, too, and for the construction
of which he provided all the necessary support.
This feeling was transformed into exact structural
plans by Károly Kós, the name of which appears on
the site bearing also Art Nouveau and organic
motifs, typical for the nineteenth century, and its
central part, the square.
Kispesti Munkásotthon Mûvelôdési Ház
Kispest Workers’ Home Cultural Centre
Részlet a Fodrász Múzeum kiállításából
Moments of the exhibition at the Barber Museum
� Wekerle site was created by state and law will
in 1908. The proposal of Sándor Wekerle, thattime
Minister of Finance, suggesting the construction
of worker’s flats from state money as the solution
for the problem of severe lack of flats in the
capital city, was supported also by István Bárczy,
that-time Mayor of Budapest. The brought-in
proposal indicated Kispest as the ideal place of the
planned new residential site. Sándor Wekerle and
his colleague at the Ministry of Finance, Ottmár
Gyôry started together working out the plan of a
modern, human-centred garden city. In those
times there had been only a few state tenders in
connection with starting the realisation of constructions
on a completely empty area. This meant
a challenge that was able to activate the aspiring
team of architects, emerged at the beginning of
the twentieth century, and which gained a
country-wide recognition later on.
Kispesti Helytörténeti Gyûjtemény
Kispest Local History Collection