The history of the house

The building was built by Ferenc József Landauer burgess of Pest as a summer residence at the end of the 1800s. The facade of the villa and the main interior spaces are the works of Ignác Alpar (creator of the National Bank, the Stock Exchange Palace and Vajdahunyad castle in the City Park) and architect István Pucher. The current owner, Gábor Kovács, believed that by World War I the building was already owned by Manfred Weisz. The fact that this was not so was discovered in a peculiar way. After the renovation works ended, on the initiation’s ceremony’s day, an elderly lady appeared and asked if she could have a look around the house. As she said, this house belonged to her father, the baron of Ohrenstein, and she lived there for 18 years. The Weisz Villa was the one next door, number 114. The lady told the new owner of the villa that way back then the working room was located on the second floor, the family dining room occupied the middle section and the balcony showed Lotz murals. No sign of these is left today.

The palace was later used by the Red Army, later 6th District’s Communist Youth Alliance. In the beginning of the 1960s the Young Artists’s Club moved to the premises, and afterwards it was occupied by the popular „Made in…” pub after the change of the regime. The villa was sold in 1996 by the Capital’s Local Government, and after a stream of change of ownerships it became the private property of Gábor Kovács, and the seat of KOGART after the renovation.