While nothing remains of the former palace of Hegedűs and Sándor at number 34 Piac street, you can still visit the site and marvel at the surroundings.
If we turn at the former Csanak Palace, – built for the famous merchant, József Csanak, while standing on the corner of the former Kádas Street (today Arany János Street) and Piac Street, and look across the street, you will see a bookstore. This site is where the palace of Hegedűs and Sándor once stood (shown below).
Between 1918 and 1933, the building housed Hegedűs and Sándor Irodalmi és Nyomda Rt., which at the time was the largest private company in Debrecen, employing forty people. Hegedűs and Sándor were well-known entrepreneurs, engaged in book trade, book printing, and paper trade and the building was used for this purpose from 1904 until the war, when the palace was destroyed.
The highly decorative building also had beautiful towers, as did the lavish buildings of nearby Gambrinus Köz and Kossuth Corner. In style, it matched the opposite Svetits Palace, but the Reformed Episcopal Palace was similar also.
Unfortunately, the building was destroyed in World War I, and a modern-style, department store “Centrum” was erected there there based on the plans of Tibor Mikolás in 1961.
Sources: Dehir and Postcards from Debrecen
