Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (1997)

ofthe façades. In his comparatively conservative designs,
A. Orth used to transform décorative éléments of Viennese
origin — here, e.g. the éléments of the upper part under
the cornice. As opposite to the ornamented front façade,
the courtyard élévations became quite simple, enlivened
with arched Windows of the staircase.
The Higher Maiden School in Levoča
The school was founded in September 1881. Also here,
the need for the new premises soon arose, and the
construction of the new school-building became a part of
the broader town-planning concept dealing with the new
square in front of the Upper Gate, outside the city walls.
The Higher Maiden School was executed in 1901-1903 by
local buildmasters János Gasch and Miksa Müller, according
to the plans designed by Sándor (Alexander) Baumgarten.
The structure consisting of two wings, forming T in
the plan, turns with its broad façade to the north, thus
performing one of the fronts of the newly created square.
With class-rooms in the frontal wing, and boarding house
and gymnasium oriented to the courtyard in the south, the
architect developed suitable disposition. The main façade
was still dominated with the symmetry, with accentuated
central part, yet it appeared very lively due to the fine
Secessionist curvilinear patterns of the décoration
combining the ceramic tiles with the plain plaster surface.
The principles of this arrangement as well as some other
éléments (e.g. the dormer Windows made similar to
helmets) point to the impact Baumgarten had experienced
while working with Ödön Lechner.
The Higher Maiden School in Bratislava
The school, founded in 1883, inherited the premises
of the former Industrial-teachers’ Educational Institute.
This solution, however, soon showed itself as unsufficient
for the needs of the maiden school with a boarding house,
despite the renovation of the building in 1894. Therefore,
another extensive reconstruction followed in 1909-1911,
according to the plans by Zsigmond Herczegh.
The three-storeyed building, L-shaped in the plan,
contained the school premises and a boarding house placed
in different storeys, but lacking such a conséquent
différentiation as we could observe in Levoča. The
arrangement and décoration of the main façade shows
combination of some Secessionist details ofViennese flavour
with Eclectic éléments transforming historicist patterns.
The Higher Maiden School in Košice
Although founded in 1883, until 1896, the school had
been temporarily accommodated in the building of different
purpose. After the building plot had been alloted by the

city in 1891, architect Gyula Pártos was commissioned to
préparé the plans of the school and the boarding house in
1892. The works, started in 1893 by the local buildmasters,
Arpád and Géza Jakab, were finished in 1896.
One-storeyed building, enhightened in the central part
of the northern main façade, stands on a square plot
surrounded by the streets, without clear dividing and
presenting the purpose of its functional parts (school-classes
and boarding house premises) in the massing. The overall
architectural treatment of the façades based on combination
of tire plain plaster surface with red ceramic plates, covering
completely the lower part and forming décorative belts and
frames in the upper part, echoes the style of Ödön Lechner,
Pártos’ partner on that time. In the annual report of the school
from 1896/97 a notice was made on Lechner’s possible
direct interference with tire préparé of the plans.
Conclusion
In the higher maiden schools built around 1900 we can
observe some changes determined by the process of
continuai extension and spécification of their educational
programme. Despite this, the tendency to the symmetrically
arranged disposition still prevailed. As different to the
rationality andmatter-of-faetness ofthe spatial arrangement,
the architectural treatment of the façades used to be dosely
connected with the existing social context. In this respect,
the important role was played by ideological, especially
patriotic aspects of the (centrally directed) educational
programme, that turned the attention to tire variants of Ödön
Lechner’s so-called National (i.e. Magyar) style. Among
the higher maiden schools, especially two were echoing
Lechner’s style, being designed by architects who had been
cooperating with and influenced by the „great master“ -
those were the schools in Košice (Pártos) and Levoča
(Baumgarten). Both of them, however, show the decoratively
abundant style in somehow reduced and simplified version,
thus possibly reflecting influences of the local milieu.
The above mentioned circumstances also weakened the
radiation of the Viennese Wagnerian School ofArchitecture
in Hungary. In the conservative milieu of Upper Hungary,
the new Secessionist trends were often combined with
surviving Eclectic features, and at the same time, the mixture
of décorative éléments taken over both frorn Vienna and
Budapest appeared quite frequently - here, the Higher
Maiden School in Trenčín (Orth and Somló) could serve as
an example. The attempts at reflecting the local building
tradition could have also determined the architectural
concept of the Higher Maiden School in Bratislava - this
brought together Secessionist and Eclectic elements echoing
the Baroque-like ornamentation that survived in the local
building production.

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