Merkur Palace, the former telephone center - 54-56 Nagymező street

Source: egykor.hu

The construction of telephone links beginning in 1881 resulted in about 5800 telephone users linked to four centers by the turn of the century, which came with the tangle of overhead lines and the roof towers they were lead into. The operation of this telephone network was taken over in 1897 by the state, making it possible to create one center, which was connected through underground lines to the 65 so-called “lead-up points” in the city, and through those to the overhead lines and the users.

The Theresatown Telephone Center, or Teréz Center, was the building just for this purpose, the first of its kind in Budapest. The pioneering achievement in technology, the telephone deserved a high quality, representative building. The art nouveau-eclectic, 11.000 m² building was constructed between 1900 and 1903 as per the plans of Ernő Balázs. There was space inside for all the necessary rooms for the operation of telephones: lines underground and overhead, distribution frames, generators and battery packs as electrical supplies, the workshops and rooms of the operating, maintenance and repair staff, operating rooms, stables and carriage houses. All of this was constructed in a representative style, fitting the strict technology that had no predecessor, using stable building structures.

  
Source: egykor.hu, epiteszforum.hu

Technology – and telecommunication with it – always changes and improves. Improvements bring reconstructions.  First the overhead lines were replaced by landlines, then the manual connecting was switched to dial-up. The sizes of the machines, the number of the staff decreased, the rooms of the building was becoming more and more unused. There was a time period, when the technology was changing really slowly, the phone capacity halting with it, and new, specific needs appeared, like the need for wiretapping.

The really quick change was brought on by the regime change and the market economy: the equipment, decreased to just a fraction of their sizes, could handle the multiplied telephones and other communications in a few percentage of the building’s capacity. Maintaining a building this size, while it was mostly empty or used as an office, was a waste for the telephone company. The palace, already having seen better days, was left unattended for a while, then it was sold and between 2007 and 2008 was under reconstruction as per the plans of Rudolf Fehérváry. It became an up-to-date office building named Merkur Palace with luxury apartments on the rooftop level.

  
Source: epiteszforum.hu, merkurpalota.com

The new owner looked for a solution that would ensure the most utilization of the building. During this search, the designer got its first assignment. The suggested – and mostly realized – functions come from the layout of the building, its place in the city, its size, standards and inherited capabilities.

The building lies on the lot between Nagymező and Hajós streets. The courtyard is perfect as a passage between them. The inside facades guard a quiet, peaceful courtyard. Under the whole house and yard is the basement. This, with some manageable compromises, was turned into a parking area, although for a while it was just partially used, because the telephone company left some of its equipment in the basement.

  
Source: epiteszforum.hu, merkurpalota.com

The façade on Nagymező street is very standard and symmetrical, with a significant feature on one side: the gate. The original designer tried to combat the lack of symmetry with the sizes and shapes of windows on the other side. During the reconstruction, this was perfected even more, so they created a second gate to access the basement level and parking area, making the façade now symmetrical.

 
Source: merkurpalota.com

The upstairs floors had been mostly exclusively used as offices in the past decades. This hasn’t changed now. Besides the original two staircases and a later built-in smaller elevator, two new vertical transportation cores and one elevator. The 100 m long corridors were eliminated and now the house has four elevators and four staircases. The new cores were built into the two towers that once had the overhead lines attached. On top, behind parapets, hidden as much as possible, are the outside AC units installed.

One beauty of the building is the great hall on the third floor. Originally this was the switchboard room, whole hundreds of telephone operator girls sat and worked the switchboards. The beautiful hall is 650 m2 big, its interior is three floors high and its style is neo-Gothic. However, because it is far from the ground floor and the streets, it was unusable as a community space. With no other options, it became an open-plan office space, with glass partitions dividing the workspaces. The design preserved the experience of the monumental space.

  
Source: egykor.hu

The other beauty is the grand staircase on the Nagymező street side. Under several layers of oil varnish, preserved the details, making high quality restoration easier. Unfortunately, the ceiling light of the staircase was left out of all the reconstruction works, so it still has the plain reinforced glass plates instead of the original, neat decorative glass.

     
Source: egykor.hu, merkurpalota.com, epiteszforum.hu

Since the original construction, the roof had been the constant weak point of the palace. The logical and harmonious division of the building was never followed up by a clean roof structure. The problem was not with the talents of the designer or the build masters, but the new and ever-changing telephone technology. The tangles of the overhead lines and the receiver structures on the roof, according to pictures and news reports of the time, were pretty dominant and terrifying features. The following reconstructions didn’t bother with the roofing, either. When they began rebuilding anything, they only did it out of necessity, to serve the relevant technology and make space for the new antenna, chimney, lifter or cooler.

With the latest big reconstruction, apartments were put under the harmonious roof, replacing the attic spaces, lower areas, engineering rooms, antenna bases and cable ducts. These apartments got balconies. On the street side, these are recessed into the roof level. The broken-through ledges hide the balconies outside, but make them livable, as well. The balconies facing the courtyard – where the whole city can be viewed from – are hidden discreetly by the battlement of the inside façade.

   
Source: merkurpalota.com, egykor.hu

The facades changed gradually in various paces then returned to their original forms. The street side ones got more and more worn down, becoming dirtier, but the courtyard side was fully renovated. Most of the original windows were taken out and replaced by large glass surfaces. During the latest renovation, the facades were redone into their original look – or as close to the original as possible.

The left side of the Nagymező street façade got the symmetrical second gate as the entrance to the parking lot. The gate was done in the same style as the original. The ground floor windows lost their parapets, became portals. The upstairs windows were redone so their outer wings remained the same, only the inside ones got thermal insulation. The brick walls were repaired, replaced, cleaned then got hydrophobic protective coating, while the plastered surfaces were repaired and colored.

The large structures, pipes, lines and machines built through time then left abandoned were demolished. Finding the original openings was easier thanks to a picture from the past. This also brought to surface the turned-out, secondarily installed stone frames, the cut steel beams and of course the remains of the openings. By these remains, the bricks framing the windows and shaping the divided facade were remanufactured.

 
Source: epiteszforum.hu, egykor.hu

A lot hasn’t returned to its original form. Originally, the wider openings on the ground floor were the entrances of the stables and carriage house. The new functions required glass doors, but the size and placement of the openings are the same. The brick ornamentation would have needed 40 different types of bricks to return to its original form. Anyone looking at it closely will discover that the rebuilding was done from less types of bricks.

During the renovation, the building was constantly in use, in varying degrees. The property became after 2009 a 5300 m2 office building, housing first-class, category “A” offices and the Apacuka restaurant/café on the ground floor, which has special design solutions and an excellent kitchen. There are also 8 exclusive penthouse apartments, and storage rooms for the apartments and offices. The equipment and design of the office spaces ensure an efficient operation for both small and medium-sized business and companies with hundreds of staff members.

The once gorgeous palace has returned to its former glory, thanks to the renovation using the latest technology and materials.

Source: merkurpalota.com

Sources: epiteszforum.hu, merkurpalota.com, egykor.hu