Zionist Architecture and Town Planning: The Building of Tel Aviv (1919-1929)

By Nathan Harpaz

Established as a Jewish settlement in 1909 and dedicated a year later, Tel Aviv has grown over the last century to become Israel’s financial center and the country’s second largest city. This book examines a major period in the city’s establishment when Jewish architects moved from Europe, including Alexander Levy of Berlin, and attempted to establish a new style of Zionist urbanism in the years after World War I. The author explores the interplay of an ambitious architectural program and the pragmatic needs that drove its chaotic implementation during a period of dramatic population growth. He explores the intense debate among the Zionist leaders in Berlin in regard to future Jewish settlement in the land of Israel after World War I, and the difficulty in imposing a town plan and architectural style based on European concepts in an environment where they clashed with desires for Jewish revival and self-identity. While “modern” values advocated universality, Zionist ideas struggled with the conflict between the concept of “New Order” and traditional and historical motifs. As well as being the first detailed study of the formative period in Tel Aviv’s development, this book presents a valuable case study in nation-building and the history of Zionism. Meticulously researched, it is also illustrated with hundreds of plans and photographs that show how much of the fabric of early twentieth century Tel Aviv persists in the modern city.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612492988

Book preview

Preface and Acknowledgments

Born in Tel Aviv, I have been fascinated by the history of the city and its unique architecture from an early age. Two individuals in particular inspired me and influenced not only the direction of my career, but also the themes to which I was attracted. My maternal grandfather was a designer who studied art and design in Berlin, Germany, at the turn of the twentieth century. He emigrated to Tel Aviv in 1920, but, since the small settlement offered no work for a designer, he traveled on to Alexandria, Egypt, to seek work in his field. Several years later, he returned to Tel Aviv to find the small village developing rapidly and dramatically into a busy city. My father’s cousin, Hersh Fenster, was a writer who lived in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century, and was associated with Marc Chagall and other artists of the School of Paris. In 1951, he published the first book about artists who perished during the Holocaust, which later became the primary source for an exhibition on that topic.

I found in the intriguing life of architect Alexander Levy, who is one of the central figures in this book, several connections to my family’s history. Levy and my maternal grandfather acquired their artistic education in Berlin, both got involved with Zionism and arrived in Tel Aviv during the same year (1920), and both struggled financially trying to pursue their professions. My grandfather stayed in Tel Aviv in spite of the difficulties, while Levy returned to Europe and, like my paternal grandparents and my uncle from Vienna, perished in Auschwitz.

In the early 1970s, as a young undergraduate student at Tel Aviv University, I began photographing old buildings in the historic sections of Tel Aviv. At the time, I could not predict that this hobby would figure prominently in my field of academic expertise. Over the years, my collection of images has expanded and gained greater significance, as many of the documented buildings were demolished or altered. A complete set of these photos is in the collection of the Tel Aviv Historical Museum, and many of them illustrate this book.

During graduate school, the topic of 1920s architecture in Tel Aviv became the core of my MA dissertation. This pioneer research resulted in Art and Architecture in Tel Aviv: 1920–1930. This publication earned the Tel Aviv University Kaplan Award for the most original academic study, and it remains an essential resource for any research of this period and location. Over the years, I have published many other articles on this topic in professional magazines in Israel.

In 1985, Graham Jahn, research editor of the London-based International Architect magazine, invited me to assist him with an issue dedicated to Israeli modernism. My contributions to this publication included biographies of architects, a history of 1920s architecture, and research on the urban development of Tel Aviv since its establishment. During the 1980s, I became an advocate for the preservation of historic buildings in Tel Aviv and actively served on several relevant committees. This work resulted in the granting of landmark status to many historic buildings and the creation of various restoration programs.

In 2003, UNESCO declared Tel Aviv a World Heritage Site because the city is home to the world’s largest collection of Bauhaus and International Style buildings. Tel Aviv, which started as a small garden city north of the ancient city of Jaffa, turned rapidly into a bustling metropolis, and in 2009 the city celebrated its centennial. In recent years the awareness of the significance of Tel Aviv’s architecture has increased; more buildings have been granted status as protected landmarks, many of them have been renovated, and new literature on the history of the city’s architecture and monographs on its architects have been published. The study in this book, based on over thirty year of research, will hopefully contribute another source of insight into architecture and town planning during the early years of the first Hebraic city in modern times.

As this book is a product of my doctoral research, I would like to acknowledge the dedicated assistance of professor, M. Willson Williams, of Union Institute & University during my doctoral program. I would also like to thank my doctoral committee members for their significant contribution: Richard Courage, Westchester College; David M. Sokol, University of Illinois, Chicago; Sandra M. Sufian, University of Illinois, Chicago; and Volker Werner Welter, University of California in Santa Barbara. I would like also to acknowledge my colleagues and friends who accompanied me on my journey with support and enthusiasm, including Marian Staats of Oakton Community College and architect Georg Stahl of Chicago.

I would like to express special gratitude to my mentors and teachers from the Department of Art History at Tel Aviv University who planted the first seed of my intellectual interest during my early studies: Mordechai Omer, Gila Balas, Edina Meyer-Maril, and architect Abraham Erlik. I would also acknowledge the generous assistance of Tel Aviv advocates and researchers Micha Gross (Bauhaus Center, Tel Aviv), Shula Widrich, and Shay Farkash.

I would like to thank the following institutions and individuals for their permission to reprint images in this publication: Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Gutman Museum, Tel Aviv; Bauhaus Center, Tel Aviv (Ravid’s books on Joseph Berlin and Josef Tischler); Architect Gilead Duvshani (Yehuda Magidovitch); The State of Israel—National Photo Collection; The Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem; the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the University of Texas Libraries; the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries; and the Hebrew University, Department of Geography & the Jewish National & University Library.

Finally, I would like to thank my family who stood behind me throughout this exhilarating experience: my wife Miriam, my daughters Ally and Sharon, and my extended family in Israel. I dedicate this book to my mother, Yonah Kaplan-Fenster, who was born in Tel Aviv in 1925 when many parts of the city were still sand dunes, a playground for her as a young barefoot girl in the middle of a new, developing neighborhood, and to my father, Baruch Arthur Fenster, who left his home in Vienna as a young adult to escape the horror of World War II and rebuild his life in the city of Tel Aviv, which means Old-New.

Introduction

This book examines advanced architectural plans motivated by Zionist ideas and the implementation of these plans driven by pragmatic needs. The balance between these forces shaped the architecture and town planning in the Land of Israel after World War I. In this work I concentrate on postwar Zionist building concepts as they are represented in architect Alexander Levy’s plan, Building and Housing in New Palestine, and the implementation of eclectic architecture and chaotic town planning in Tel Aviv in the 1920s. The city of Tel Aviv, as a new entity that served almost as a laboratory for modern experimentation during that time, is my main focus.

The ideology of the Zionist movement was based on utopian ideas that later were transformed into real applications. The time frame of this study starts in 1909, with the foundation of Tel Aviv north of the old city of Jaffa, but focuses on the dramatic growth of the city between 1919 and 1929. It ends with the implementation of the Geddes master plan in the northern part of Tel Aviv and the beginning of the utilization of the International Style. I depict the first decade (1909–1919) and the next decade (the 1930s) in less detail, yet as relevant to the focal point of the study.

While the theoretical plan for Jewish housing by architect Alexander Levy, written in Berlin in 1920, covers all of Palestine, my geographic focus is Tel Aviv as the first modern Jewish urban entity. Given that Alexander Levy arrived in Palestine during the early 1920s and erected most of his buildings in Tel Aviv, I aim in this comparative study to illuminate the gap between his theoretical plan and his realization of a pragmatic approach. My purpose is to examine and evaluate architectural and urban structures as they result from ideal or advanced formulas or pragmatic applications. I assess the Zionist movement’s promotion of ideal and advanced models in architecture and town planning, and point out the association between modernity and Zionist ideology. I examine the transformation of Tel Aviv into a central site for experimentation in modern architecture and urban planning in the early twentieth century, tracking the development of the city from ideal model to eclectic architecture and chaotic town planning, and also identify the European origins of Levy’s plan, its relationship to the Zionist organization, and the reason for its failure.

I argue that theoretical Zionist plans in architecture and town planning based on European concepts were difficult to implement, as they clashed with the desires for Jewish revival and self-identity. While modern values advocated universality, Zionist ideas struggled with the conflict between the concept of New Order and traditional and historical motifs.

My assumptions are based on the historiography of architecture. The significance of this book lies in its exploration of the dynamic between ideal concepts and pragmatic activities that can be applied to other studies in the history of architecture and town planning, as it addresses international developments such as the model of the garden city, standardization of the building industry, cooperative housing, Geddes’s concepts of modern town planning, and the massive application of the International Style in architecture. The city of Tel Aviv in the 1930s led the world in the execution of modernity in architecture.

Previous publications on this topic have dealt with the adoption of modern and advanced plans in architecture by the Zionist movement and provided historical data for the implementation of Zionist settlements. My research examines the relationship between specific theoretical plans and pragmatic implementations. The comprehensive plan of Alexander Levy for housing in Palestine is fully presented and analyzed here for the first time. I provide a glimpse into the fierce debate among Zionists in Berlin on how to manage Jewish settlement in Palestine after World War I. My analysis also uniquely reveals the gap between the theoretically advanced plans of the Zionist movement in regard to architecture and town planning and the actual chaos and regression that occurred throughout the development of Tel Aviv in the 1920s.

The history of architecture and town planning are commonly discussed by scholars such as art historians or architectural historians. Because the medium of architecture is based on an interaction between function and aesthetics, any exploration of the field must encompass knowledge of other disciplines. In addition to the history of art, architecture, and urban planning in modern time, I incorporate in my analysis other disciplines such as Jewish and Israeli history and the philosophy of modern social-political movements.

Some recent studies on the Zionist architecture and town planning in the early twentieth century emerged from other fields such as geography, urban studies, history, and political science. The advantage of applying the field of art history to this given topic is the interdisciplinary dimension that extends the lens of exploration. Philosophically, the research methods of the history of architecture are connected to those of art history and general history. The main idea of empiric methodology is to evaluate historical facts from an objective distance. This approach was used by Henry Russell Hitchcock in Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, in which the author avoids any interpretation at all; he describes the buildings and provides their locations, dates, and architects. This limited, purely empirical, approach raises questions about the scope and the objectivity of the research.

Various other methods in the history of architecture focused on specific aspects and were occasionally motivated by trends in the field. Some researchers emphasized social history and related their studies to those who inhabit various architectural structures. Others concentrated on political history, dealing, for instance, with ideology or gender. And some writers turned to operative history to promote a subjective reflection on architecture. While historians of architectural history who engaged in current architectural debates were often more objective, architectural history that was conducted by architects could have been motivated by an architect’s personal agenda or interest in current architecture. English architectural critic Reyner Banham, for example, advocated modern technology in his architectural writing because he was influenced by Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture. Juan Bonta, in Architecture and Its Interpretation, criticizes the subjective views of the major writers attempting to capture the development of modern architecture. Bonta demonstrates how different experts provided widely variable evaluations of specific architectural works due to the absence of more scientific methods of research.

Today, the most common research method for the history of architecture is an interdisciplinary approach. Modern architectural research, like the study in this book, mines other disciplines to find interpretative frameworks, research methods, and primary and secondary sources. The methodology of architectural history used here also involves qualitative research. I follow Norman Denzin and Yvonne Lincoln, authors of a comprehensive three-volume handbook on the subject, who suggest that qualitative research concentrates on multi-methods, integrating an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. Therefore, qualitative researchers study different materials in their natural setting, and provide interpretations to the phenomena. Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials.

The process of qualitative research in the field of architectural history starts with data collection. The techniques of data collection range from conducting interviews, focus groups, surveys, and observation to researching artifacts and buildings or archival documents. The next step is to reduce the data to a manageable scope by coding it and eliminating any irrelevant information. The data are then displayed in charts, graphs, or tables, and, in the last step, the researcher identifies patterns, provides explanation, and evaluates the findings.

The strengths of qualitative research as it is manifested in this book are its capacity to take in rich, holistic qualities of real life circumstances; its flexibility in design that includes procedures allowing adjustments in the process; and its sensitivity to the meanings of artifacts and processes of human activity. The weaknesses of qualitative research are the challenges of dealing with vast quantities of data, the lack of established sets of guidelines or systematic procedures, and the questionable credibility of qualitative data within the post-positivist paradigm. Though qualitative research emerged from the social sciences, this research method remains similar to the interpretive-historical method used in the history of architecture. The processes of collecting data, coding, displaying, and evaluating are all applicable and relevant. The field of architecture utilizes humans as subjects of research in its study of human interactions inside architects’ studios, human behaviors inside architectural structures, and the engagement between architects and their clients.

Although the research in this book does not include humans as subjects—because it is historical in nature and the subjects are artifacts (buildings)—it works with many components of qualitative research. This study benefits from the concepts of qualitative research in the areas of comparative study and evaluation of the gap between theory and practice. Architectural structures constitute natural settings and can be researched through qualitative parameters. My research also incorporates grounded theory, in which data leads to ideas and conclusions.

In addition, I apply interpretive historical research in my analysis. This method offers an investigation into social-physical phenomena within complex contexts, with a view toward explaining those phenomena in a holistic, narrative form. Historical inquiry is similar to qualitative inquiry; in both, the researcher attempts to collect as much evidence as possible concerning a complex social phenomenon and seeks to provide an account of it. Historical inquiry requires searching for evidence, collecting and organizing that evidence, evaluating it, and constructing a narrative that is complete and believable.

My collection of data or evidence consisted of researching manuscripts, documents, correspondence, photographs, architectural plans, and buildings. Next, identification and organization included identifying sources, gathering facts, observing, taking notes, and filing or organizing data. Evaluation dealt with description, analysis, assessment, determination of truth, and triangulation. Finally, narration generated description and story.

This study adapts the approach of historiography of modern architecture with the method of the grounded theory where the data collection leads to the theory of the research. It deals with change in architectural styles as a reflection of place, time, and ideology. This approach also enables the application of qualitative research strategies to achieve greater credibility and accurate results.

The data in this book, which was collected over three decades, and the examination of its research material provide insight into the mind and soul of the Zionist movement in a crucial time. The results of World War I generated new hopes to the future of the settlement of Jews in Palestine. Even though some advanced plans, like Levy’s proposal, for building in the new-old homeland were executed, the implementation of such programs failed in the early stage. The city of Tel Aviv missed the opportunity to adapt modernity in the decade after the war and submerged itself into chaotic town planning and eclectic architectural styles. Finally, in the 1930s the gap between the theoretical and the practical was closed and Tel Aviv turned into a global center for modernity and advancement.

Part 1

Theories on Zionist Architecture and Town Planning

Chapter 1

The Concept of Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Architecture and Town Planning

The examination of architects and movements of early modern architecture and town planning is a vital part of this study. European architects and town planners significantly influenced the urban vision of the Zionist movement in theory, on such projects as the Levy plan (1920), on the implementation of plans such as the garden city (Tel Aviv, 1909) and Geddes’s town planning (1929), and on the extensive use of the International Style (1930s).

Modern architecture emerged in the early twentieth century with a dramatic change in the relationship between aesthetics and function. It followed the concept of form follows function and eliminated historic styles and overuse of ornamentation. During the first half of the twentieth century, modern architecture was considered experimental, and it gained massive popularity only after World War II.

Though some scholars associate the development of modern architecture with social and political revolutions,¹ others see it as a reflection of progress in science and technology. The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design, for example, focuses on the masses: mass education, mass entertainment, mass transportation, universities with huge enrollments, hospitals with thousands of beds, and stadiums seating hundreds of thousands.² The element of the masses together with the speed of transportation expressed the technological fanaticism of the age.³ Science, technology, mass transportation, mass communication, and mass production and consumption all affected the development of modern architecture and design. They also reflected the predominance of the city over the small town and the country, as architects tried to develop solutions to problems encountered in designing for the masses by using new materials and new techniques.⁴

The first criterion of modern architecture was that architecture for the masses must be functional. This idea was a continuation of the principles of French seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rationalism. In 1841, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852), Great Britain’s foremost architect and designer of the nineteenth century, wrote in True Principles of Christian Architecture that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety … the smallest detail should … serve a purpose, and construction itself should vary with the material employed.⁵

Other key movements in the early stage of Modernism were the English Arts and Crafts and the German Werkbund. The German Work Federation (Werkbund) was cofounded in 1907 by Herrmann Muthesius, author of The English House (1905), who surveyed practical aspects