c. 1911–1930Town Hall
The Town Hall and fiacres on Liberation Square
The Neo-Renaissance Town Hall fills the upper part of the view, its central tower, corner roof structures and ground-floor arcade all clear, seen across the main square then called Trg Oslobođenja and today Trg slobode. Pollarded trees, paths and a low boundary fence lay out the square below, several horse-drawn passenger carriages wait along the roadway, a fiacre stand being documented on the main square, and pedestrians stand nearby. Tram rails curve across the paving at right. György Molnár designed the building and it went up between 1893 and 1895. The card is captioned twice, in Cyrillic and in Latin, and two stamps are affixed and cancelled on the picture side rather than on the back, above the roofline, so it went through the post face outwards.
About this place
The Town Hall, still known in Novi Sad as the Magistrat, stands on Trg slobode opposite the Catholic church and has housed the city government for more than a century. The office dates from 1748, when the settlement then called the Petrovaradin Trench was raised to a free royal city, but for its first century and a half the magistracy rented one building after another around the town. Where the new house should stand was fought over: Svetozar Miletić and his supporters wanted it in the quarter where the Serbs lived, the Catholics wanted it on the main square facing their church, and the Catholics won. György Molnár, who took no fee for the work, revised his plans several times and looked partly to the town hall at Graz; Karl Lerer and Jožef Cocek built it between 1893 and 1895. It is a neo-Renaissance palace on a rectangular plan with a dome at each corner and a balconied tower over the centre, its front carrying allegorical figures of Greek goddesses by the Novi Sad sculptor Julije Anika and its ceremonial hall painted by Pavle Ružička. The tower once held the fire bell Matilda, which was melted down in the war.
On the card
НОВИ САД, Варошка Кућа / NOVI SAD, Varoška Kuća
Novi Sad, Town House
- Date
- c. 1911–1930
- Coordinates
- 45.25477, 19.84460
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 1013 × 1600 px
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