Starting from the 19th century, more and more written documents survive that record events from the first day of certain construction projects, such as the contractor taking over the building site, staking out the building location, breaking ground, then later holding the topping out rite, and finally completing the building. It is possible to learn about the daily weather, the number of expert and assistant craftspeople working on the site on a given day, the tasks that were completed, and sometimes the instructions of the architect after visiting the site from the construction journals that were recorded on paper until recent times. To the joy of architectural historians, the construction journals recording the work on large-scale public buildings and private villas have survived, as well as sometimes those for quite small structures. Unfortunately, the construction journal for the Rózsi Walter Villa has not yet turned up. In an earlier installment of the Villa Journal, it was noted that József Fischer reported at the end of April 1936 that a villa was being constructed on Bajza Street in a letter written to Marcel Breuer. The client only received the occupancy permit in the fall of 1936, and thus it is not possible to make conclusions about the details of the construction that took place in the meantime.
During the investigations and rehabilitation currently being performed on the villa, the building itself has provided unexpected details about the work done on it. Originally, there was a thin Rabitz ceiling over the stairway leading from the ground floor to the first floor. This had a purely aesthetic role, reducing the quite large ceiling height at the beginning of the stairway to a more cozy scale.
The suspended ceiling below the load-bearing slab was a bit higher over the former conservatory at the top of the stairs, and was only about 50 cm below the actual ceiling of the first floor at the entrance to the salon. The gradual increase in the interior height through these sophisticated means prepared those entering the salon for its spacious feel.
The condition of the first floor of the villa in May of 2021 (photograph: Róbert Hack)
The Rabitz ceiling had to be demolished as a part of the rehabilitation due to its visible sagging and the danger it could collapse. It was at this time that inscriptions that were made by the workers and had not been seen since the summer of 1936 were discovered above the stairway. They were scratched into or written using charcoal on the raw, smoothed plaster that had been left unpainted since it was not visible.
Inscriptions that had previously been hidden by the suspended ceiling above the stairway leading to the first floor
(photograph: Róbert Hack)
“Burján” scratched into the plaster
“Achtung” written in charcoal
“Vigyázz a falra/cső van benne!” (“Careful with the wall/it has a pipe in it!”) written in charcoal
The most informative graffiti from the perspective of construction history is on the first floor, on a vertical surface hidden by a suspended ceiling at the entrance to the salon. There is a stick figure on the left-hand side with an illegible speech bubble coming from its mouth (photograph: Csaba Lengyel).
“Barazuth [Barczuth?] László
Burian János
1936. VI. 10.
It dolgosztak”
(“László Barazuth [Barczuth?], János Burian worked here, 10 June 1936”) can be read to the right of this.
In other words, the suspended ceiling above the staircase leading up to the first floor was made at the beginning of June 1936.
The other interesting group of finds in the villa is related to the foundation of the building. József Fischer wrote the following in his memoirs about the commission:
“I talked with the prospective clients in their residence furnished with Rococo-style furniture. The artiste [Rózsi Walter] informed me, that as I could see, they had defined tastes and these furnishings would not be fitting in a modern house. The man [her husband, Géza Radó] listed off the materials they had already bought second-hand: roof tiles, an elliptical spiral staircase, inlaid hardwood floors, large bricks, highly articulated plinth stones, and an iron fence. (…) I told the editor [Géza Radó] to sell the roof tiles, and that we would utilize the other materials after modifying them. The plinth stones were placed with their smooth sides facing outwards and their profiles inward, set in concrete.”
József Fischer could be forgiven if he misremembered certain details many years later. Thus, it was not guaranteed that the solution described in relation to the plinth had really been employed. However, Fischer’s statement about the carved stones purchased and re-used from a Historicist building that stood nearby was proven true after these plinth stones were removed. The molded stones that made up the plinth or the upper part of the foundation really were built into the base turned inwards.
One of the re-used carved stones from the base of the villa and the impression of the carved stones on the foundation (photographs: Pál Ritoók)
Pál Ritoók