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Hotel design in British Mandate Palestine: Modernism and the Zionist vision

2010; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13531041003595035

1744-0548

Daniella Ohad Smith,

Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

Abstract From the early 1920s through the 1930s, an important yet forgotten avant-garde architectural phenomenon developed in the Zionist community of British Mandate Palestine. In cities and resort regions across the country, several dozen modernist hotels were built for a new type of visitor: the Zionist tourist. Often the most architecturally significant structures in their locales and designed by leading local architects educated in some of Europe's most progressive schools, these hotels were conceived along ideological lines and represented a synthesis of social requirements, cutting-edge aesthetics, and utopian national ideals. They responded to a complex mixture of sentiments, including European standards of modern comfort and the longing to remake Palestine, the historical homeland of the Jewish people, for a newly liberated, progressive nation. This article focuses on Jerusalem's most ambitious modernist hotel, the Eden Hotel, to evaluate how the architecture of tourism became a political and aesthetic tool in the promotion of Zionist Palestine. Keywords: Zionist national stylePalestine tourismEden HotelKing David HotelPalace HotelAlexander BaerwaldJulius BergerJosef FrankGustave-Adolphe HufschmidAlexander KochLeopold KrakauerAbraham LifschitzJulius PosenerYohanan RatnerEmil VogtWerner Joseph Wittkower Notes 1 Conrad Hilton quoted in Wharton Wharton, Annabel Jane. 2001. Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar], Building the Cold War, 12. 2 For example, Brian L. McLaren McLaren, Brian L. 2005. Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya, Seattle: University of Washington Press. [Google Scholar], Architecture and Tourism, argues that during the Italian colonization of Libya, the modern and the traditional were consolidated in hotel architecture in order for travel and accommodation to be aligned with fascist political propaganda. In Italy in the same period, the nation's medieval and Renaissance heritage was invoked to elevate the regime's image and symbolize national regeneration. Restoration undertaken to recover the authentic for tourist purposes extended to hotel architecture. See Lasansky Lasansky, Medina. 2004. The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. [Google Scholar], The Renaissance Perfected. 3 Berkowitz Berkowitz, Michael. 1997. Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], Western Jewry; Cohen-Hattab Cohen-Hattab, Kobi. "Hitpathut tashtit ha-tayarut bi-Yerushalayim bi-tkufat ha-shilton ha-briti, 1917–1948" (The development of tourism infrastructure in Jerusalem during the British rule, 1917–1948). Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001 [Google Scholar], "Hitpathut tashtit ha-tayarut"; Bar and Cohen-Hattab Bar, Doron and Cohen-Hattab, Kobi. April 2003. A New Kind of Pilgrimage: The Modern Tourist Pilgrim of Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Middle Eastern Studies, 39(2): 131–48. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], "A New Kind of Pilgrimage." On the transformation from pilgrimage to modern tourism in Palestine, see Cohen-Hattab Cohen-Hattab, Kobi, Katz, Yossi and Yossi, Katz. March 1999. Mi-Terra Santa le-turizm: Ha-mehkar ha-ge'ografi-histori shel ha-tayarut u-mekomo be heker Eretz Yisrael. Cathedra, : 113–36. (From Terra Sancta to tourism: The geographical-historical study of tourism and its contribution to the historiography of Eretz Yisrael) [Google Scholar] and Katz Cohen-Hattab, Kobi and Yossi, Katz. 2001. The Attraction of Palestine: Tourism in the years 1850–1948. Journal of Historical Geography, 27(2): 178–95. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], "Mi-Terra Santa le-turizm" and "The Attraction of Palestine." 4 The new image of Palestine being marketed to Jewish tourists reveals itself in the newsletters of the organizations that promoted tourism and organized trips to Palestine, such as the Keren Hayesod (the United Israel Appeal) and Hadassah (the Women's Zionist Organization of America). Active in Europe and the United States, these organizations recognized that developing tourism infrastructure could generate considerable income for the settlers in Palestine and they also perceived tourism as a central engine for ideological propaganda. 5 Cohen Cohen, Erik. 1979. A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences. Sociology, 13(2): 179–201. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], "A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences," 179–201. 6 Reynolds-Ball Reynolds-Ball, Eustace A. 1924. Jerusalem: A Practical Guide to Jerusalem and Its Environs, with Excursions to Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, the Dead Sea and the Jordan, Nablous, Nazareth, Beyrout, Baalbek, Damascus, etc, 3rd ed., London: n.p.. [Google Scholar], Jerusalem, 10. The history of the Mediterranean Hotel is explored in Gibson and Chapman Gibson, Shimon and Chapman, Rupert L. July–December 1995. The Mediterranean Hotel in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem. Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 127: 93–105. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], "The Mediterranean Hotel." 7 Bar and Cohen-Hattab Bar, Doron and Cohen-Hattab, Kobi. April 2003. A New Kind of Pilgrimage: The Modern Tourist Pilgrim of Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Middle Eastern Studies, 39(2): 131–48. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], "A New Kind of Pilgrimage," 135, 143. 8 Phone interview with Victor Huga, 20 November 2007. In architecture, the term Beaux-Arts describes the academic architectural approach to classicism, emphasizing unity and decorum, that was taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It has come to be identified with the use of a cast-iron structural skeleton covered with stone or other material to convey a variety of historical styles. 9 For an example of Muslim tourist guides, see A Brief Guide to Haram al-Sharīf 1925. A Brief Guide to Haram al-Sharīf, Jerusalem: Supreme Moslem Council. [Google Scholar]. On the Supreme Muslim Council and its efforts to promote tourism, see Kupferschmidt Kupferschmidt, Uri M. 1987. The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam under the British Mandate for Palestine, Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill. [Google Scholar], The Supreme Muslim Council. 10 On the significance of Nebi Musa in the context of the emergence of the Palestinian national movement, see Friedland and Hecht Friedland, Roger and Hecht, Richard D. 1996. "The Nebi Musa Pilgrimage and the Origins of Palestinian Nationalism". In Pilgrims and Travelers to the Holy Land, Edited by: Le Beau, Bryan F. and Mor, Menachem. 89–118. Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press. [Google Scholar], "The Nebi Musa Pilgrimage." 11 On the so-called First National Style and modern architecture in Turkey, see Bozdoğan Bozdoğan, Sibil. 2001. Modernism and Nation Building, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. [Google Scholar], Modernism and Nation Building. 12 The Palace Hotel, currently under reconstruction, will reopen in 2010 as a luxury hotel operated by the Waldorf Astoria Collection. The basis for the new design is a 1993 plan by architect David Kroyanker implemented by Yehudah Feiglin. In addition to preservation and restoration of the original building, the plan includes a five-floor tower that will house the guest rooms. 13 I would like to thank Ado Vallaster for allowing me to reproduce Hufschmid's drawings for the interior of the King David Hotel (figures 3 and 4 below) and for generously allowing me access to this unpublished material, which documents the architecture and décor of the most lavish of all of Palestine's hotels. 14 Palestine Hotels Limited, a corporation registered in Jerusalem in 1929, was formed by Egyptian Hotels Limited in conjunction with other financial groups and individuals, including Egyptian Minister of Finance Sir Joseph Cattawi Bey, Sir Victor Harari Pasha and his son Colonel Ralph Harari, and Barons Felix and Alfred Manasca of Alexandria, as well as the American Palestine Economic Corporation of New York, founded by Louis Brandeis, Felix Warburg, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, and Lord Melchett. 15 Farago Farago, Ladislas. 1937. Palestine at the Crossroads, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. [Google Scholar], Palestine at the Crossroads, 30; "Tourism—Our Main Industry, the Government's Indifference," Palestine Weekly, 7 June 1929, 507. 16 The King David's first director was the hotelier Joseph A. Seiler (1896–1948), whose legendary family of hoteliers owned a number of properties in the Alpine resort of Zermatt, Switzerland. See Izakson Izakson, Eliahu. 1994. Mareh mi-dor ha-gesher, (A view from the bridge generation) Tel Aviv: Or Publishing. [Google Scholar], Mareh mi-dor ha-gesher, 59. On the construction of the hotel see "The King David Hotel," Palestine Weekly, 2 August 1929, 88. 17 Hufschmid was a graduate of the École d'Art and the École des Arts Industriels in Geneva, where he resided for his entire career. He also attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and designed hotels in Egypt and Beirut. On Hufschmid, see Leitung Leitung, Hans-Jörg Heusser. 1981. Lexikon der zeitgenössischen schweizer Künstler, Stuttgart: Huber. [Google Scholar], Lexikon, 475. 18 For more on Vogt's hotel architecture, see Kriens–Kairo 1998. Kriens–Kairo, Emil Vogt: Luzerner Architekt um 1900, Kriens: Museum im Bellpark. [Google Scholar]. The essay by Peter Omachen Omachen, Peter. 1998. "Hotelarchitektur: Bauer für die Welt". In Kriens–Kairo, Emil Vogt: Luzerner Architekt um 1900, 32–55. Kriens: Museum im Bellpark. [Google Scholar], "Hotelarchitektur," examines Vogt's work in hotel architecture. His Swiss hotels include the Hotel Rütli (1897), the Rheinischer Hof (1897), the Monopol & Metropole (1898), the Waldsätterhof (1898), and the Nationalhof (1900) in Lucerne, as well as the Carlton in St. Moritz. For Egyptian Hotels Limited, Vogt designed the Luxor Hotel, the Cairo Ritz-Hotel (1905), and an expansion of the Mena House in Cairo, in the shadow of the pyramids. 19 Vogt quoted in Semberg Semberg, Fiona, ed. 1993. The Story of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem: The King David Hotel. [Google Scholar], ed., The Story of the King David Hotel, 10. 20 "Gem Museum at the King David," Palestine Post, 1 January 1933, 9. 21 Sherman Sherman, A.J. 1998. Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1917–1948, New York: Thames and Hudson. [Google Scholar], Mandate Days, 163. 22 The Swiss Werkbund, modeled after the Deutscher Werkbund, was a national artists' organization, founded in 1913. 23 On Hufschmid's designs for the interiors of the Immeuble Clarté, see Rüegg Rüegg, Arthur, ed. 2002. Swiss Furniture and Interiors in the 20th Century, Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser. [Google Scholar], Furniture and Interiors, 132–33. 24 In a 1925 article Hufschmid published in Fachblatt für Innen-Dekoration, the leading German journal for interior design, he justified his preference for historical styles in modern interiors by noting that "the older styles were once 'modern.'" See Hufschmid Hufschmid, Gustave A. 1925. 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Bezalel: Tokhnito u-matarato, (Bezalel: Its Aim and Purpose) New York: Friends of Professor Boris Schatz. [Google Scholar], Bezalel, 7; Baerwald Baerwald, Alexander. February 1925. Omanut ha-moledet. Mishar ve-Ta'asiyah, 3–4: 94–97. (Art of the homeland) [Google Scholar], "Omanut ha-moledet," 95–96. 31 Quoted in Meyer-Meril Meyer-Maril, Edina. 1998. Alexander Levy—ein deutsch-jüdischer Architekt zwischen Berlin, Tel Aviv, Paris und Auschwitz. Menorah, 9: 315–37. [Google Scholar], "Alexander Levy," 320. The Palästina Baugesellschaft was founded in 1919 by Alexander Levy and included among its members Alexander Baerwald and Fritz Kornberg. Its 1920 publication, titled Vom Bauen und Wohnen im neuen Palästina, edited by Levy, focused on the provision of housing for new settlers in Palestine. The goal of the organization was to plan settlements, to design and construct residential and commercial buildings, and to advocate methods of industrialization. 32 Baerwald Baerwald, Alexander. February 1925. Omanut ha-moledet. Mishar ve-Ta'asiyah, 3–4: 94–97. (Art of the homeland) [Google Scholar], "Omanut ha-moledet," 95. 33 Baerwald Baerwald, Alexander. February 1925. Omanut ha-moledet. Mishar ve-Ta'asiyah, 3–4: 94–97. (Art of the homeland) [Google Scholar], "Omanut ha-moledet," 95 34 See, for example, Zakim Zakim, Eric. 2006. To Build and Be Built: Landscape, Literature, and the Construction of Zionist Identity, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar], To Build and Be Built. 35 Julius Berger, "Absatzpropaganda und Exportförderung nach Palästina und dem Mittleren Orient," Palästina, 15, no. 3–4 (March–April 1932): 105. 36 Josef Frank, "Palästinensische Baufragen," Die Neue Welt, 14 September, 1928, 5. Frank had been a central figure in the Austrian Werkbund in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1933, in an upsurge of anti-Semitism in Austria in response to the rise of the Nazis in Germany, a number of right-wing members of the Werkbund resigned to protest the organization's perceived Semitization. The Werkbund split into two separate organizations, the socialist Jewish Werkbund, centered on Frank and Oscar Strand on the one hand, and the right-wing Catholic New Werkbund under the leadership of Hoffmann and Clemens Holzmeister. See Stritzler-Levine Stritzler-Levine, Nina, ed. 1995. Josef Frank: Architect and Designer: An Alternative Vision of the Modern Home, New York and New Haven: Yale University Press and the Bard Graduate Center. [Google Scholar], ed., Josef Frank, 55–58. 37 In addition to Fachblatt für Innen-Dekoration, Koch published numerous books focusing on interiors and the decorative arts, such as Einzelmöbel und neuzeitliche Raumkunst (Darmstadt, 1930); Innen-Dekoration unter Mitwirkung hervorragender Künstler und Fachleute herausgeben und geleitet (Darmstadt–Stuttgart, 1939); 1000 Ideen zur kunstlerischen Ausgestaltung der Wohnung (Darmstadt, 1926); Handbuch neuzeitlicher Wohnungs-Kultur (Darmstadt, 1917); Farbige Wohnräme der Neuzeit (Darmstadt, 1926). 38 The extensively documented architectural production of the 1920s and 1930s has been the focus of numerous studies, while the era's less familiar domestic culture and interior design have rarely been investigated, an omission that has shaped critical thinking on modernism. The most influential studies of architectural modernism include Nikolas Pevsner's seminal Pioneers of Modern Design and Theory and Design in the First Machine Age by his student Reyner Banham. See Whiteley Whiteley, Nigel. 2003. Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar], Reyner Banham. 39 Among the architects who broke free of the conventions of the grand hotel and adopted modernist values in hotel design were Adolf Loos, Peter Behrens, Richard Neutra, Emile Fahrenkamp, and Erich Mendelsohn. Loos designed the Hotel auf dem Karlsplatz in Vienna, the Hotel am Semmering in the Semmering area in the lower Alps, Austria, the Hotel Esplanade in Zagreb, the Grand Hotel Babylon in Nice, the Sport Hotel in Paris, and the Exhibition Palace hotels in China and Juan le Pins, France; none of them were realized. His renovation of the Esplanade Sanatorium in Karlsbad was the only instance in which the architect worked on a hotel project actually built. Behrens designed hotels in San Remo and in Brün, neither of which was built. Fahrenkamp designed the Palace Hotel Breidenbach Hof in Düsseldorf and Mendelsohn designed a hotel in Palestine and two in England, one of them in conjunction with Richard Neutra; none were realized. 40 Meyer Meyer, Peter. 1945. "Stilgeschichte des Hotels". In Bauliche Sanierung von Hotels und Kurorten: Assainissement technique d'Hotels et de Stations Touristiques, Edited by: Meili, Armin. 41–46. Zurich: Verlag für Architektur. [Google Scholar], "Stilgeschichte des Hotels," 45. 41 Meyer Meyer, Peter. 1945. "Stilgeschichte des Hotels". In Bauliche Sanierung von Hotels und Kurorten: Assainissement technique d'Hotels et de Stations Touristiques, Edited by: Meili, Armin. 41–46. Zurich: Verlag für Architektur. 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Correspondence with Pedro Zuniga, 3 April 2004. 51 Abraham Lifschitz to the Jewish Agency, 23 September 1938, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, box S53/643. 52 "Das Hotel- und Pansionsgewebe in Palästina," Palästina Nachrichten, no. 10, 1941, 4. 53 Text of advertisement that appeared in various Zionist newspapers and periodicals in Europe and the United States in 1938, including Hadassah News Letter, Jüdische Rundschau, and Neue Jüdische Presse. 54 Born in Odessa, Russia, Ratner was a graduate of the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, where he qualified as an architect in 1922. A year later, he immigrated to Palestine and settled in Haifa. On Ratner's work, see Sosnovsky Sosnovsky, Silvina. 1992. Yohanan Ratner: The Man, the Architect and His Work, Haifa: The Technion. [Google Scholar], Yohanan Ratner. 55 Ratner Ratner, Yohanan. 1934–5. Likrat ha-signon ha-mekori. 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See his articles, "The Stones of Jerusalem"; "Arkhitekturah bi-Yerushalayim," 4–6; "Modern Architecture in Jerusalem"; and, with Tamar Goldshmid Levin, Michael and Goldshmid, Tamar. 1980. Ha-ir ke-muze'on: Omanut ve-adrikhalut modernit bi-Yerushalayim, (The city as museum: Modern art and architecture in Jerusalem) Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and the Jerusalem Foundation. [Google Scholar], Ha-ir ke-muze'on, 25–30. 61 On the vernacular character of early modernist architecture in Palestine, see Herbert Herbert, Gilbert. 1995. Bauhaus Architecture in the Land of Israel: Is the Concept of a Modern, Architect-designed Vernacular a Contradiction in Terms?. Architectura, 25(2): 224–28. [Google Scholar], "Bauhaus Architecture in the Land of Israel." 62 Wittkower was a graduate of the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, completed his architectural studies in the Stuttgart Technische Hochschule and trained under Richard Doecker. He moved to Berlin, where he worked for the contracting firm of Sommerfeld and Co. and in 1927 opened his own practice, establishing a reputation as an interior decorator of urban apartments. With the rise of the Nazi Party in 1933, he closed down his practice and immigrated to Palestine. Until 1948 Wittkower worked in his own practice in Tel Aviv. From 1949 to 1966 he partnered with architect E. Baumann and in 1974 he established a practice with architects Arieh Adiv and Israel Stein. Wittkower designed several major hotels in pre-state Israel, including the Gat Rimon in Tel Aviv (1936), parts of the interiors of the Kaete Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv (1932), and the interior of the Dora Bloch sanatorium in Ramat Gan (1938), in addition to the interiors of the Eden Hotel (1938). After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, he designed some of the country's most ambitious hotels, including the Nordau-Plaza Hotel in Tel Aviv (1948), the Accadia Hotel in Herzliya (1955), and the New Sheraton in Tel Aviv (1977). See Agassi Agassi, Uzi. 1992. Ha-brizah ha-krirah ba'ah mi-ma'arav, (The cool breeze comes from the West) Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. 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Still regarded as one of the most dastardly crimes in the history of Israel, the event played a defining role in the struggle of the Jewish community against the restrictive British immigration policy, which had condemned thousands of Jews to death in Europe.