Oradea 3: The Black Eagle

When we were in Oradea, we stayed at the Black Eagle, a commercial center in the main square. It was designed by Komor and Jakab and was, according to Frederic Bedoire and Robert Tanner, "the most extensive effort to give Nagyvarad [Oradea] the appearance of a big city, with an elegant glazed arcade, inspired by the Gresham in Budapest." They also argue that its size and color made it the "riposte of Jewish enterprise to the three Christian churches which until then had dominated the [main square]."

The Black Eagle has recently been restored, though the arcade doesn't seem to be very busy.

From the only stained glass window that survived.


The hotel bursts with all kinds of intricate details. (This one is actually the top of a gutter).




(Tony said it felt a little like staying in a cupcake, but that's another story.)



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It was an extraordinary experience, after seeing all those buildings, to be able to stay in one.



Komor and Jakab also designed two houses for Emil Adorjan, the Jewish entrepreneur who commissioned and financed the Black Eagle. Bedoire and Tanner use Oradea as one of their examples of the "New Jersusalem," and explain how the identity of Oradea's Jewish community was manifested as much, if not more, in the civic landscape of the city as it was in synagogues.

According to Bedoire and Tanner, Adorjan was "a man of about thirty, entrepreneur as well as intellectual, in close touch with the financial world and with the radical writers in the city, and a great collector of books."

Like Komor, Adjoran died in the Holocaust. Oradea became, next to Budapest, Hungary's largest ghetto; of the 27,000 Jews deported in 1944, Adjoran was the first to go.