KRALJA ALEKSANDRA 14
The two-story Menrath Palace, built in the art nouveau style, with a base in the shape of the Cyrillic letter “Ш”, in 1908 for the owner Jožef Menrath, according to the design of the Pest architect Lipot Baumhorn, who also designed the Synagogue complex and the Financial Palace in Novi Sad.
This building was originally built as a furniture store, on the site of an old house with a store owned by the same owner, and due to its larger dimensions, the neighboring house was purchased from the owner Wilhelm Weiss.
After World War II, it was nationalized and in March 1948, the Agitprop printing house was moved into the ground floor.
The reconstruction was carried out between 2003 and 2007, with the conversion of the attic into business or residential space.
The wide street facade of Menrat’s palace, with 7 vertical openings and a central vehicular entrance. The facade is richly decorated in the Hungarian Art Nouveau style, with three symmetrically arranged bay windows, while the side ones are finished with balconies. Decorative plastic masks, plants, meander and toothed friezes, as well as geometric ornamentation.
The central part of the mansard roof is a high curvilinear attic.
On Sauter’s plan from 1889, on the then plot number 632, there was an old one-story house of Jožef Menrath with a furniture store on the ground floor, and for the construction of this art nouveau palace, he also bought the neighboring plot number 633 from Wilhelm Weiss.
In a photo taken around 1900, we see a one-story Menrath house, with the advertisement “furniture Menrath” written along the entire length of the frieze of this house, as well as on the calcan wall of the neighboring one-story house.
In the photo also taken around 1900, two single-story houses are circled on the site of Menrat’s Art Nouveau palace, the left of which is Merat’s old house with a shop advertisement on the frieze.
Menrat’s Palace in a colored photograph around 1912.
Photo of Menratova also around 1912, on the other side.
Photo from the same period, but very sharp with legible inscriptions on Menrat’s palace.
An aerial photograph taken in 1926 shows Kralja Aleksandra Street, and Menrat’s Palace is surrounded by a courtyard building with a base in the shape of the Cyrillic letter “П”, forming an atrium courtyard.
When today’s Mihajla Pupin Boulevard was broken in the 1960s, the last building in the row became the Menrat Palace. A photograph of Menrat’s palace from the late 1990s.
In the photo from 1992, we see the appearance of the courtyard facade of Menrat’s palace with three wings, of which the staircase is shorter in the middle. The courtyard facade is dominated by communicating balconies with wrought iron fences.
The realisation of this site was supported by the Administration for Culture of the City of Novi Sad
The sources and materials of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Novi Sad were used for the realization of this website
The Old Core of Novi Sad was declared a cultural asset, by the decision on establishing it as a spatial cultural-historical unit – 05 no. 633-151/2008 of January 17, 2008, “Sl. gazette of the Republic of Serbia” no. 07/2008.
