Ákos Kovács House

The northern street front of Brașov Street is remarkable through the coherence of its two story tall residential buildings built in the first decade of the 20th century: of these, Ákos Kovács house stands out through a series of traits that make it unique amongst its neighbours – it is the only building to not fully occupy the street-front and the only one that doesn’t have its main entrance from the street but from the inner courtyard.

In 1909 Ákos Kovács, chief engineer of the State Architecture Bureau buys the 172 Austrian klafter house lot for the price of 25 kronen/klafter, a total of 4300 kronen, and in the month of August of the same year he obtains a building authorisation for a two story house, the building of which will last until May 1910.

The silhouette of the resulting building, marked by a frontispiece influenced by vernacular Swabian Banat houses, stands out from its mostly 1900 Style neighbours. The facade is extremely simple, lacking elaborate ornamentation (especially in comparison to its neighbours, true examples of 1900 Style in Timișoara). The two story house has a rusticated base and horizontally banded quoins done in plaster to mark the house’s corners.