The building was built in the Art Nouveau style by the lawyer Sándor Szemző in the early 1910s. Sándor Szemző, was born into an Israelite family in 1876, was a trainee lawyer in Budapest, and after his marriage moved to Kőszeg, where he opened an office and worked as a city councilor. During the First World War he served as a military officer, and after the “Great War” he moved his practice to Szombathely. He sold his house to Ferenc Reményi, a military officer and traveler. Reményi was born in 1868 in Pest. He completed his elementary schooling in Pest and, at his father’s persuasion, enrolled at the Fiume Naval Academy in 1882. At the age of twenty, in 1888, he passed his officer’s examination, which marked the beginning of his military career. Between 1912 and 1917, he was commander of the Sopron Honvéd Főreálschule, and in 1914 he was promoted to colonel. In February 1917, he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph. From the minutes of the Council of Ministers, we know that after the war, in March 1921, he was appointed as a retired colonel at the Military Military School of Kőszeg. He bought the house of Dr. Sándor Szemző, a lawyer, on Chernel Street for 54,000 crowns, and lived there until the retired former sailor’s death in 1940.
After the Second World War it served various functions, and in the 2000s it became the home of the local House of Arts.
The building was renovated in 2017 as part of the KRAFT program. Designed by Robert Gutowski as one of the buildings of the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK), the ground floor research rooms and offices were converted while retaining the original rooms and service areas. The basement was completely renovated to create an international standard computer server room and a small lecture theatre.