The Kablo factory, or the Bratislava branch of this originally Viennese company founded at the end of the 19th century by the Bondy brothers, was located on Továrenská Street. The Vienna factory initially had a relatively low productivity and focused on the production of insulated wires and push-button cords. Otto Bondy produced clock strings in Bratislava from 1894. The Bratislava branch also bore his name. The name that eventually became established, Účastinná spoločnosť Továreň na káble (the Participation Company Cable Factory), was not coined until a year later in Budapest, where another branch of the Bondy factory was established. The Bratislava factory produced waxed wires, later insulated with rubber. Gradually, it also focused on various rubber products. Initially, the factory had only 30 workers and one steam engine powering cylinders for processing the rubber mixture.
The factory was not doing well on the threshold of the 20th century, so Otto's nephew Egon Bondy became its director. Over the next few years, the factory began to prosper under Egon's management and the factory site was expanded. In 1905 it had eight production halls and an administration building and the premises grew to 15.000 m2. The factory's success was linked not only to the change in management, but also to the growing demand for telephones and telegraphs.
Between 1910 and 1912, a branch of Kablovka - the Gumon plant - was built on Košická Street. Despite the fact that in the interwar period, the production was partly relocated to Cologne in the Czech Republic, the Bratislava factory did not cease to thrive. Moreover, in 1937, a modern administrative building was added to the factory premises, built following the plans of Friedrich Weinwurm (at that time Továrenská Street already bore the name of the factory's former director Egon Bondy, who died in 1934). The construction of the administration building was supervised by Antonín Bartoš. In 1947 the building was extended by a third floor - the extension was implemented by Ľudovít Ollárek's company.
After the war, Kablo was put under state administration, nationalized and the national enterprise Kablo - Gumon was created. Even though in the post-war period the factory premises were expanded by other buildings - the Research Institute of Cables and Insulators (Výskumný ústav káblov a izolantov – VÚKI) was established here (it was founded in 1950 on the site of three smaller purchased factories), the building substance of the premises did not change significantly. In 1953, a warehouse for combustibles was added to VÚKI and in 1957 a semi-operational hall was built. The factory consisted mainly of brick production buildings with plate glass windows, with brick elements (lesenes) rhythmically articulating the facades and with gabled roofs with overlights, supported internally by cast-iron columns. The later buildings on the site already had modern reinforced concrete structures. A typical image of the factory, also known from historical photographs, was the view of the saw-tooth-roofed halls lining Továrenská (in the interwar period Bondy) Street. The central building of the complex was the boiler house with a chimney from 1917, which was demolished in 2007 together with the rest of the complex, despite the fact that Kablovka was in the process of being declared a national monument. Today, the site of the factory is occupied by the Twin City office complex.
Bibliography:
SCHWARZOVÁ, Anna (zost.): Technické pamiatky Bratislavy. Zborník Mestskej správy pamiatkovej ochrany a starostlivosti a ochrany prírody Bratislava. Bratislava, MSPSOP 1985, s. 22 – 27.
OBUCHOVÁ, Viera: Priemyselná Bratislava. Bratislava, Marenčin PT 2009, s. 209 – 218.
