The school's history reaches back to 1911 when the mayor of Budapest opened an elementary school at the site to meet the increasing demand for education in the expanding city. A year later, the building became temporary home to the Pedagogical Seminary, whose purpose was to provide guidance and later supervision for all teachers and schools in the city. The elementary school thus became a "training school" where teachers could become acquainted with the latest pedagogical techniques. The seminars given at the school became enormously popular between the two World Wars; Zsigmond Móricz often praised them in Nyugat.