History of the library

MONUMENTAL BUILDING – HATTYÚHÁZ (SWAN HOUSE)

In the town centre of Kiskunfélegyháza a beautiful typically Classicist style building catches the eye of strangers as well as of citizens. This architecturally and historically precious monument is called HATTYÚÁZ.
It is architecturally significant as this is the only standing public building in Kiskunfélegyháza that is built in Classicist style. It is also significant in connection of literature because it is connected to Petőfi’s family, it holds Petőfi-memories.

The building had been set up in reasonably short time, between the summer of 1819 and 1820. Most of its rooms gave place to a guesthouse and the apartment of the pub’s operator. The shambles and its additional rooms took the one third of the Hattyúház. The building had a slaughterhouse and a pen as well. It also had an inner yard called Hattyúkert (Swan Garden) which served as a summer pleasure ground. The beautiful Classicist style guesthouse and the slaughterhouse – with their arcade corridors, corniced columns, slightly eminent frontispiece with a white swan on it, which was the pub’s sign and became the house’s name in 1820 – had become the most honourable building of the town’s main square.
In the following periods many changes were made that ruined the building’s style. The Hattyúház’s pub, slaughterhouses and later its shops were rented by numerous people.
The predecessor of today’s Sándor Petőfi Library called NÉPKÖNYVTÁR (Public Library) had been given place in a small part of the building at the end of 1952.

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