Facility and occupants
Ferenc Reichl chose the location to build his palace and the neighboring rental building in an attractive location, opposite the train station and the newly renovated park. The first, more modest project of January 1903, completely rejected and in a very short time designed a unique secession building of functional space and original forms.
Istovremeno je gradio oba objekta: i svoju stambenu zgradu i najamni objekat do nje. Poslovi su trajali nepune dve godine zbog proizvodnje crepa i brojnih fasadnih ukrasa u fabrici „Žolnai“ u Pečuju i zahtevnih radova u enterijeru. Korišćeni su najnoviji kvalitetni materijali, angažovane su najbolje majstorske radionice za obradu drveta i kovanog gvožda, mozaika, vitraža, staklenih prizmi i gipsanih reljefa.
Svo svoje znanje i kreativnost Rajhl je ugradio u svoj dom. Motiv srca, čest u mađarskoj narodnoj umetnosti, ovde je simbolično primenio na svakom detalju.
He sought permission for his occupation on December 28, 1904. He furnished the palace’s rooms and salons with expensive furniture and works of art he had brought from his long and long journeys.
The proceeds from the rental building and ground floor shops were intended to provide the architects with additional means of comfortable living. However, the Reichl family only lived in the palace for four years. Bankruptcy forced them to leave their home because of the high costs and unpaid jobs.
Despite numerous public appeals for the building to be purchased and housed in the museum, the palace belonged to the bank that advertised the sale and sold all inventory at auction. The palace was bought by industrialist Teresa Hartman to rent it to tenants. The tenants known so far were mostly friends and relatives of the Hartman family: lawyer Alexander Gavanski, who lived in the palace in the early 1930s with his wife Ljubica, was a friend of the army of Joseph Hartman, Teresa’s son, and the family of pharmacist Emil Schosberger, who is also lived in the palace from the mid-thirties to the early forties, was in kinship with the Hartmans. Emil Schosberger purchased the building from the Hartman family, but he, his wife, Anna, and two sons, Peter and Andrew, were evicted from the building at the beginning of World War II.
After World War II, the palace was nationalized. It was awarded in 1948 to the Subotica City Museum, which adapted the premises to its permanent exhibition, and since 1969 has housed the Contemporary Gallery Subotica. Since 1973, the building has been a protected cultural monument.
