Titus de Bobula

Titus de Bobula (24 December 1878 – 1961) was a Hungarian-American architect, businessman, and political activist. Born in Hungary, he had a brief but brilliant career as a pioneer of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession in the United States; his later life was of a profoundly peripatetic nature.

Biography

Early life and architectural career Titusz Bobula was born in Budapest on Christmas Eve 1878 to (1844–1903), an architect and politician of Slovak descent, and his wife, Mária Pozdech. His father, an eminent architect who sat in the Diet of Hungary between 1876 and 1897, afforded the Bobula family a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle; the family lived in the extravagant Bobula Palace from 1883 to 1887. Titusz would follow his father and elder brother, (1871–1922), to the Royal Joseph University, where he studied architecture. De Bobula is believed to have also built commercial and apartment buildings, though documentation is scarce. He was tried for manslaughter after fatally running over a woman with an automobile in Duquesne, but was later acquitted, in 1904. In 1905, he put on an exhibition of his secessionist architectural drawings at the Pittsburgh Architectural Club, which was met with some skepticism by the club's president, John T. Comes. After Pittsburgh In 1910, now identified as the general superintendent of Gates Coal and Coke Company, he married Eurana Dinkey Mock of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a niece of Charles M. Schwab's wife, Emma Eurana Dinkey. The couple moved to New York City, where they resided in an eclectic (now-demolished) Spuyten Duyvil mansion designed by de Bobula.

Coup plot

De Bobula and his wife moved to Hungary in the early 1920s, and he made successful investments which allowed him to turn to patronage of then-marginal far-right forces opposed to the Bethlen government. However, the plot was somewhat farcical in comparison with its German sibling, not in the least because the alleged envoy of Hitler who egged on the plot was an agent provocateur who revealed it to the government before it could be executed. Due to the trivial nature of the plot, de Bobula was promptly released from jail and left Hungary with Eurana. Rumors that de Bobula was an agent of Henry Ford swirled after the plot's revelation. Ford, however, personally denied the charges. Later life By 1934, de Bobula had started a new career as an arms dealer and designer, filing a patent for a grenade in 1934. He and Eurana still resided in Spuyten Duyvil, albeit in reduced circumstances, no longer in the home he designed. In 1935, he was mentioned as a New York-based submachine gun importer ("Colonel de Bobula") in testimony to a Special Committee of the Senate regarding the munitions industry. He unsuccessfully filed objections to Emma Dinkey's will upon the latter's death in 1939, claiming that his wife was entitled to part of her estate. Nikola Tesla biographer Marc Seifer claims that de Bobula did architectural work for Tesla in the 1930s.

De Bobula moved to Washington, D.C., after 1939, continuing to involve himself with the estate of his wife's aunt. He and his wife were evicted from their Northwest residence in 1944. In the early 1950s, he became involved in a real-estate dispute with an employee of the CIA; agency documents pertaining to the matter labeled him a "litigious crank". In letters de Bobula wrote to Allen Dulles in the wake of the dispute, he claimed that he and his wife lived in poverty in Takoma Park, with his letterhead still identifying him as an architect.

De Bobula died in 1961. His Washington Post obituary described him as a retired consulting architect best known for designing churches in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He and his wife are buried in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Known buildings

1903 – St. John the Baptist Greek Catholic Church and Rectory, Munhall, Pennsylvania 1903 – Glen Tenement, Hazelwood, Pennsylvania – 418 First Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1904 – First Hungarian Reformed Church, Hazelwood, Pennsylvania 1904 – St. Emory’s Hungarian Catholic Church (now Faith Bible Church), Connellsville, Pennsylvania 1904 – St. Michael's School and parish house, Braddock, Pennsylvania 1906 – Sts. Peter & Paul Greek Catholic (now Ukrainian Orthodox) Church, Carnegie, Pennsylvania 1907 – Apartment building (Everett Apartments), Shadyside, Pennsylvania 1907 – Holy Cross Catholic Church, Glassport, Pennsylvania (heavily modified) 1908 – St. Michael's Catholic School, Braddock, Pennsylvania – House at Spuyten Duyvil (2521 Palisade Avenue), Bronx, New York (demolished)

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