Gyulai Ferenc House and Studio

At 28 Ciucului Street, Sfântu Gheorghe, behind the wrought iron gate, a special storey house catches your eye. A small copperplate indicates for the passersby that the building is considered a monument.

The house and the adherent studio were built in the early 20th century for Gyulai Ferenc, photographer, in Hungarian Art Nouveau style marked with Lechner Jenő’s name. The inscription „Gyulai műterme” on the facade, reminds us of the photographer, whose name is also preserved by a photo club in Sfântu Gheorghe.

Gyulai in 1918 moved to Budapest and sold the house and the glass-roofed studio to Incze Lajos, a local photographer. The building was nationalized in 1950, but Incze Lajos had been using the naturally lit studio until 1957, when he had to enter the Diligence Handcrafts Cooperative.  From the nationalized property, only two of the upstairs rooms were used by the Incze family, all the other rooms were used by strangers. The studio was transformed into a flat.

Rácz Lajos (1911-1980) an excellent language teacher from the Szkely Mikó College lived in the building with his wife Incze Olga (1918-1980), who continued the family tradition and worked as a photographer.