The palace of the former Southern Land Casino is located in the Iosefin historical neighbourhood, along what is today 16 Decembrie 1989 Boulevard. The land underneath, situated between the neighbourhood’s old central point and the Bega channel, became a building site with the decision to tear down the fortifications of the citadel of Timișoara at the end of the 19th century. Built by Budapest architect Emil Töry between 1902 and 1904, it opened on January 15, 1905 for the Iosefin-Elisabetin Social Club.
The corner building has two main wings that determine a continuous front in relation to its surroundings. Developed as a three-storey structure, it combined housing (on the upper floor) and public (on the ground floor and, partially, on the first floor) functions. Because of urban tissue configuration and the presence of a bend on 16 Decembrie 1898 Boulevard, it focuses the perspective from Alexandru Mocioni Square towards the central area. The architect consequently paid particular attention to the corner relative to the composition of the façade, the corner area becoming the main point and enjoying a particular treatment.
Exterior façades are composed of two distinct registers, the ground floor and the upper floors. The corner of the façade is rounded and at an off-angle to the general field, incorporating a direct access located in the compositional axis of the corner area and protected by the intrados of a modern, curvilinear balcony. The off-angle corner area is symmetrical to the distal areas of the jutty façades organised into an axial composition. The upper area of the corner is marked by a complex pediment of a sinuous outline which incorporates a decorative element initially supporting pyramidal roof. Both it and the two feminine figures at the jutty’s extremities and integrated into decorative scrolls placed over the cornice level have sadly fallen in, the lack of façade maintenance making it impossible to retrieve.
Façade decoration is inspired by historical patterns next to highly stylized and geometrized natural vegetal elements. Column heads and ornamental belts contain gargoyle heads and anthropomorphic or zoomorphic elements. Bosses on the upper register are covered in combed plaster with vertical wavy ridges. In the characteristic style of the 1900s, the building illustrates the local architecture at the beginning of the 20th century, combining Secession and modern geometrical elements.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the present-day 16 Decembrie 1989 Boulevard (Hunyady út at the time) featured a line of trees creating an agreeable ambiance. Between the building’s façade and the green area there was a summer pub, with a buffet on the ground floor and protected by a cloth marquee.
The Casino was organised rather as a club: it was known for introducing the 5 o’clock tea fashion, and had both dedicated tables and spaces for literary meetings, a library and a ballroom. Before the political changes it housed the Modern Variety Theatre, and in the interwar years it became the White House, Nikolaus Trasser’s fashion house, with a large clothes store on the ground floor. After WW2, a part of the public spaces went into the local Community Arts Centre administration, the ballroom was renamed Lira Hall – a multifunctional cultural space to the day – while in the garden a theatre was open during the summer (later the Forum Movie Theatre, it run until the 1950s). In the socialist years, the façade on the ground floor underwent significant changes: the store now housing the city’s first self-service restaurant, Rapid, the façade, with its equidistant openings, was turned into a continuous display, which required changing the entire ground floor as well as structural interior changes.
As seen in photos of the time, the corner frontispiece above the window on the second floor bore the names of the successive business – Délvidéki Kaszinó and White House. The inscriptions disappear after WW2, the frontispiece losing much of its plaster in that area.
After a long period of neglect, the Palace was amply rehabilitated. Sadly, the lack of façade renovations led to the loss of some unique decorative elements on the pediment cornice, and recent work disregarded the original texture of bosses and combed plaster on the Mocioni Street side.
The building is on the list of historical monuments in the Old Iosefin Neighbourhood Urban Site (code number TM-II-s-B-06098).
References:
Mihai Opriș, Mihai Botescu. Arhitectura istorică din Timișoara [Historical Architecture in Timișoara], Timișoara: Tempus, 2014
Kecskemeti, Stefan. Pe urmele copilăriei şi strămoşilor în Timişoara de altădată. Povestea unei vieți [Childhood and Ancestors of Yesteryear Timişoara. The Story of a Life].
https://heritageoftimisoara.ro/cladiri/Iosefin/adresa/Sf%C3%A2nta+Maria/8