The Blue Church of St. Elizabeth

Born Eugen Jenö Károly in Pest, Hungary, Ödön Lechner had early access to the building trade because his grandparents were brick manufacturers. Completing his architecture degree at the Berlin Bauakadamie, Lechner returned in 1878 to Budapest, where he designed buildings in a style that combined classicist and Hungarian folk-art sensibilities, including Budapest’s Drechsler Palace (1884), the Geological Institute Building (1899), and the Hungarian State Treasury (1901). Lechner is best known for his Jugendstil buildings with steel structural supports and Zsolnay terra-cotta that broke free from Gothic, Renaissance, and classicist styles, making his Museum of Applied Arts (1896) an internationally acclaimed building. His expansive portfolio of art-nouveau buildings has earned him the title of the “Hungarian Gaudi.”