Dezső Malonyay's House

Dezső Malonyay acquired the building lot at 5 Izsó Street on July 3, 1905. Béla Lajta’s drawings received official approval in September the same year. The building was to be a two storey villa with two flats – with gables and some additional rooms in the attic. On the ground floor there would be a six-room flat, while another was placed on the first floor with a similar floor plan but complete with a spacious study, a large kitchen and a servants’ room one floor up. The floor plan followed the tripartite structure typical of Hungarian detached houses since the Enlightenment period. The central axis contained the entrance hall and the living room with the drawing room and dining hall on the left and the bedroom, the bathroom and the nursery (with the governess’s room attached) on the right. A flight of stairs connected the entrance hall of the upper floor flat with the ’coffin lid roofed’ study taking up the central space of the attic. The floor plan was special in that both flats had an entrance on the main front, with no shared porch or staircase. The villa, had it been completed according to the first version of the drawings, would have caused no stir at all – a reserved but professionally planned art nouveau villa like many more.

The date on the modified version is 13 October 1906. This one shows a mirror image of the entire floor plan, this time with the whole second floor taken up by rooms, which are, however, arranged in a new way. The original study remained in place but is now labelled ’library’, with a separate study attached to it from the right, and with an adjoining large roof-terrace on the opposite side. Still greater changes occurred on the outside of the building. While earlier it was to be a squat symmetrical structure sitting under a giant roof, it became a sleek, asymmetrical building with two well defined wings. The original picturesque roof-landscape with gables and turrets turned into a disciplined hipped roof. With the art nouveau decor gone, the entire structure became more organised and unified – turning the villa into one of the earliest and best known examples of the influence of English Free Style architecture in Hungary. Other sources of inspiration – Finnish National Romanticism and local folk architecture – are also perceptible in the building, mostly in the details of the interior.

In 1909 Dezső Malonyay sold the villa to the wife of Count György Haller, who decided to convert the large second storey roof-terrace into rooms. The plans were made this time by Kálmán Lux.

Eszter Gábor