Looking at the building of 17-18 Bartók Béla Street we hardly can believe that it used to be a dormitory accommodating military students in 1908. What’s more, its first floor even hides an old chapel still in use today.

This is all true! This building used to be a unit of St Imre Dormitories with 200 rooms, a ceremony room, a canteen, a 4000-volume library, a club room, a tennis court in the garden, gipsy music in summers and in-house balls. This wide range of facilities for students was conceptualized by Gyula Glattfelder, a committed religion teacher, later archbishop of Csanád Diocese, who meant to establish not only an accommodation for students but a kind of community center to facilitate their moral and academic progress.

Before WWI it cost 800 and 750 crowns per semester to rent a single or double room. The war, however, raised prices to 1300 and 1100 crowns by 1915. No wonder the number of students unpacking their suitcases that year dropped from 212 to 130 and military drafts throughout the year left only 40 of them by the end of the year. Fortunately, the end of the war brought back life to the residence hall and students returning from the battlefields enrolled again making it full house soon.

A rental house was also established here. By a close look at the windows of the 4th floor you can spot two mosaics of St Stephen and St Imre. You may also realize that downstairs and first floor were not built at the same time, although their style matches. This is because the original plans were made for a church, however, finally it came true in a much more special way. To see how, you need to enter the building, proceed to the first floor and open a door, which looks like an ordinary door of a flat. That is where a catholic chapel hides that used to be attended by dormitory residents too. The spacious chapel decorated with paintings by Ernő Jeges is still host to holy masses today.

The building has huge and hidden inner yard invisible from the street. The pleasant green area contains a WW1 monument with a statue of St. Imre commemorating teachers and students killed in the war. Scouts make a visit every year to keep their memory alive.

Today, called as Gábor Baross Dormitory, the building also functions as a residence hall for students of Budapest Technical University, Transportation Engineering Faculty. However, St. Imre Dormitory did not vanish either and was reopened in Szeged.