Shanghai Hudec

- Laszlo Hudec, Shanghai's star architect of the 1930's
- Fleeing his native country in WWI
- Stamping his signature on more than 100 buildings in Shanghai
- Shanghai's Gaudi

• Laszlo Hudec (1893-1958)
  

1893.1.8
Born in Besztercebanya (now Banska Bistrica in Slovkia), in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, son of a master builder and the Lutheran minister's daughter

1902-1910
Starting to work at his father's construction sites  when he was 9 years old, during the summer holidays, received a carpenter, a mason and a stonecutter certificate before entering university

1910-1914
Studied in the department of architecture at the Hungarian Royal Joseph Technical University in Budapest

1914-1918
Volunteered to join the army after the outbreak of WWI; captured by Cossack patrols in the frontier in 1916; transferred to the prisoner's camp in Siberia; later escaped (jumped from a train near the Chinese border and made his way to Shanghai)

1918
Arrived in Shanghai through Harbin; employed in the office of the American architect Rowland A.Curry as a draftsman

1920, 1921
Hudec's father died of a heart attack; in order to tackle family affairs, travelled back to Europe for the fisrt time after his arrival in Shanghai

1922
Got married to Gisela Meyer, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy German merchant; starting to build his first residence on Lucerne Road

1925
Opened his own architectural office, in the Building of Yokohama a Specie Bank, starting his independent career

1929
Travelled from New York to San Francisco in USA in order to get acquainted with the lastest developments of high-rise architecture, as he was about to start the project for the Park Hotel

1930
Sold the old residence to build a larger home with a big garden close to the Columbia Circle as his three children arrived one after another

1932
Moved his office to the upper floors of the Gospel Light Building (China Baptist Publication Society Buidling) that he himself had just designed

1937
Sold the residence in Columbia Road, moved with his family into an apartment located on the ground floor of Hubertus Court Building

1942
Was appointed Honorary Consul of Hungary in Shanghai

1947
Left Shanghai hastily with his family for Europe in January

1947
Moved to Switzerland and later participated in the excavation of Saint Peter's tomb underneath the Vatican Basillica in Rome

1948
Settled in Berkeley, University of California in USA; retired from architectural practice and dedicated himself to religious and archeological studies

1958.10.26
Died of a heart attack in his house in Berkeley at age of 65; his wife at his will sent him back to his family's vault in hometown Besztercebanya