In this house, from the decoration of the facade, the arrangement of the interior, through the forms of the furniture, the colours of the stained glass to the graceful female figures on the lamps, Art Nouveau fills everything.Emil Vidor, a student of Ybl, inspired by Belgian Art Nouveau and German Jugendstil, designed mansions villas and houses for the elite. He combined the craft of European masters with Hungarian, historicist elements. As many other architects of the time, he liked to apply Zsonay majolicas for decoration.
To have the chance to express his creativity in the modern but disputed style, the architect needed a generous and knowledgeable commissioner. Béla Bedő, though his profession unrelated to art, maintained an interest in the field. His factory, the Budapest Glue Plant produced lime glue, hide glue, and bone black. With numerous factories in the Monarchy, the magnate owned 7 houses in Budapest alone, among which the Honvéd street mansion was the smallest. On the first floor of the house, completed by 1907, Mr Bedő lived with his wife in an interior populated by furniture designed personally by Vidor. The building also housed the head office of the factory and some of the staff. As a popular element of the time, the building contained a winter garden with a fountain.
Some opposed the novelties of Art Nouveau. One such disputant was the first Hungarian to win an olympic gold in swimming, Alfréd Hajós. Also an architect, he designed the swimming pool on Margaret island. Although a student of Lechner, the creator of the Art Nouveau ' Golden Bull' Hotel in Debrecen, he was appalled by Vidor's design. Hajós's office was located opposite the building, and, as legend has it, he many a time stormed out of his workplace to curse at the ongoing construction of Bedő's building, and demand instant demolition of the eyesore.
In 2003 architect Attila Benkovich and János Gerle architectural historian, with the assistance of first-rate experts of the period, and taking clues from contemporary photographs, reconstructed the building. The founder and owner of the Hungarian House of Art Nouveau, Tivadar Vad, established a collection showcasing prime examples of the artifacts of the time, and a café reminiscent of the era. They offer an insight into the bourgeois drawing rooms and milieu of turn of the century Budapest. Temporary exhibitions, round-table discussions and music events fill the House of Art Nouveau with life.
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