The Museum Garden is downtown Pest’s largest public park: ”Pest’s green centre”.
The area surrounds the National Museum, which rose to become the joint symbol of freedom, Eurpeanism and national independence. The garden’s history accompanies us every day, casting a faithful impression of nearly 200 years of our history, it serves as a playground for children, a meeting point for university students, a place to study and rest, where everyone can sunbathe, breathe some fresh air, read, or chat with each other. The so called MUZI.
We present the garden of the past with photographs from the collections of the Central Database and Informatic Department and the Historical Photo Department.

Photo: The earliest known photograph of the Museum and the garden
Ede Heidenhaus, 1859

This image is the odd one out among the photographs of the Museum Garden. Back then, there was no car traffic on the streets, so children did not play only in the park, but also on the square surrounded by places behind the Museum Garden. The boy on the right side of this image, kneeling ready to go, is László Muskát, who in 1924 became Hungary’s champion in 110 metres hurdles. He was also part of the relay race team reaching 4th place at the Paris Olympic Games. In 1925, he set a Hungarian record in hurdles.

Photo: Boys preparing for a footrace in today’s Mihály Pollack square
Unknown photographer, 1913

The incredibly sharp original glass negative, measuring 13 × 18 cm, allows to see all the details of the Museum building, the garden, and the surrounding boulevard. Cabs waiting along the road, horses with their heads on their nose-bags, the crate meant to collect horse dung, the ladies’s long skirts, the nanny with a head-scarf pushing a stroller in front of the southern wall, the well-kept lawn, the evergreens and the trees still bare in the fresh spring sun. The horse-path, also represented in the playground recently inaugurated in the garden. Missing from this gorgeous amateur photograph: the statue of János Arany.

Photo: The Museum boulevard and the garden
Amateur photograph by X. Ferenc Kemény, early 1880s

One of the most sensational items of the Hungarian pavilion of the Milan World Exhibition of 1906 was Géza Maróti’s so-called “Duck fountain”. The ducks, with eosin enamel coating, seemed to almost be moving due to lights and water. The Zsolnay factory made several replicas of the fountain. Miklós Zsolnay sent one to the National Museum; it was placed in the garden in 1909. Unfortunately, the fountains did not survive well. The Milan one burned out, and the one at the museum was partly hit by hail. In the end, it was replaced by the memorial of Ottó Herman, and thus dismantled in 1930.

Photo: Woodworker Sándor Gelbmann and his wife beside the Duck Fountain
Unknown photogprapher, between 1928-1930

The whole world knows the characters of the Paul Street Boys, thanks to Ferenc Molnár’s heart-wrenching, forever morally enlightening tale. The key moment of the start of the story takes place in the Museum Garden in 1889: the Pásztor Boys take, or “einstand” Ernő Nemecsek’s glass marbles. Director Zoltán Fábri shot the scene of the movie here in the garden, at the original site. In our collection, among the negatives of the Esti Hírlap, we find the images taken during the shooting of the film, but ultimately not published in the paper.

Photo: Shooting the “einstand” scene of the Paul Street Boys movie. In the centre, from the front is Anthony Kemp, the actor portraying Ernő Nemecsek. Movie director Zoltán Fábri sits with his back to us
Esti Hírlap, April, 1968