Korányi & Fröhlich

Empires perish slowly. As the Gothic village churches outline the borders of the medieval West, or the recycled Lenin statue pedestals those of the former Empire, so the quietly lurking shutter labels mark even after a hundred years the extension of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the action radius of the shutter capitals Vienna and Budapest. After Czernowitz, Lwów, Żółkiew and Budapest, now we encountered the memory of the Korányi and Fröhlich company from Budapest in Szabadka/Subotica, on a shutter long pulled down at the corner of Gorky and Matija Gubec, formerly Damjanich and Bercsényi streets (in red on the map).




The Korányi and Fröhlich shutter and locksmith’s ware factory was founded around 1902 by Béla Korányi in Budapest’s Józsefváros district, at Kisfaludy street 5 (in blue below). The prospering company also built a representative headquarters for their shops and offices at the corner of Regiment 32 Square and Baross Street (in red below).




The traces of the former factory and many of its further products were researched by the Józsefváros Anno blog. The Budapest blog provides guidance to the reparation of the few Korányi and Fröhlich shutter pullers. One more survivor, varnished in black, was photographed by Marguerite. A further example, the surviving parasol opener of the vanished restaurant of the Kiskunfélegyáza railway station was posted on the Train Stations site.




In Subotica, just one block from the Fröhlich shutter, we also discovered a still working shutter puller by one of the Budapest companies delivering to the whole Monarchy – for example to Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe, now in Romania – Justus Sándor and Son, at Hugo Badalić Street 3 (how was it called at that time?), in the Incognito Pension (in blue on the above map of Subotica). In the dim light, with a pocket camera, we could only take the photo below. Go, look at it and take better ones. Ask for room number one.