CULTURE
CAFÉ SOCIETY
AT BUDAPEST’S FAMOUS CAFÉS, OLD WORLD CHARM IS NEW AGAIN. BY JACQUELIN CARNEGIE
L
ong before “café culture” flourished in Paris and Vienna, it thrived in Budapest. The joy of coffee drinking was introduced by the invading Ottoman Turks in the 1500s, and by Budapest’s Golden Age, between 1870 and 1910, there were some 500 coffee houses in the city. In their heyday, Budapest’s cafés were cherished rendezvous spots for aspiring writers, poets, artists and intelligentsia of all stripes. People spent hours in their favorite café, sharing ideas and reading the many newspapers and periodicals available to patrons. Before the age of television and the Internet, for up-to-the-minute news and the most interesting gossip, you’d head to one of these cafés. During this period, the cafés were so central to daily life that when the first early film reels appeared, they were projected on walls in the cafés. (Two eventual film industry giants, director and producer Sir Alexander Korda and Oscar-winning director Michael Curtiz, were first introduced to movies this way. Later on, in Casablanca, Curtiz would recreate Budapest’s café atmosphere on the set of Rick’s Café.)
Most of the classic Budapest coffee houses had sumptuous interiors, plush furnishings, gleaming chandeliers, and high, frescoed ceilings to rival the Sistine Chapel. But, after two World Wars and the Communist era in Hungary, the old famous cafés had been destroyed or closed. In recent years, many of these once-grand cafés have been restored to their original splendor. NEW YORK CAFÉ Opened in 1894 on the ground floor of a stylish office complex, designed by architect Alajos Hauszmann and financed by a New York life insurance company, the café was a favorite haunt of the writers and editors who worked in the building (now a five-star Boscolo hotel). For struggling writers, the New York provided free ink and paper and offered a low-cost “writer’s menu” (bread, cheese and cold cuts). During Budapest’s Golden Age, much of the city’s creative business took place here or at the Café Central. CAFÉ CENTRÁL Opened in 1887, the Central was a popular meeting place for writers, poets, editors and artists. In the 1890s, writers sitting Above: New York Café; during Budapest’s Golden Age, it was a hotbed of creative activity.
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