Celebrating Bauhaus

An over-worn popular saying about Israel's three major cities is that Haifa works, Jerusalem prays, and Tel Aviv plays.

Of course one can find workers, prayers, and revelers in all three cities, but Tel Aviv can offer something tangible the others cannot - the largest collection of Bauhaus-style buildings in the country, a virtual outdoor museum that never closes its doors and charges no fee.

Last week, Tel Aviv celebrated a year since being declared a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site. The festivities included a series of night-long tours and cultural events.

The "White City" is home to more buildings in the Bauhaus - or Modern Movement - style than anywhere else in the world.

German Jews who made aliya in the l920s and '30s brought with them the then-newest kid on the building block: the ideas of German architect Walter Gropius, known as the father of Modernism.

Gropius, who originally gained his reputation for factory design, headed the Bauhaus School of Art and Design in Dessau, which was forcibly closed in l933 by the Nazis. The talented design visionary, who died in the late l960s, fled to London and, after four years there, moved to America where he took up a teaching post at Harvard University.

Ironically, Tel Aviv - the first Jewish city - has become the largest site for Bauhaus posterity, with some 3,500 buildings. Most of those built on German soil were destroyed during World War II.

Tel Aviv was somewhat negligent in preserving these buildings in the past, but a surge of awareness from private citizens that trickled up the rickety ladder to city hall over the past decade has resulted in more than 1,000 Bauhaus and other buildings being rubber stamped for conservation.

Some interesting and very attractive examples of Bauhaus can be found on Rehov Bialik, a quiet side street leading off the noisy, crowded nearby thoroughfare named after Lord Allenby. Bauhaus homes are neighbors to other architectural designs on the street where the houses of Israel's national poet Haim Nachman Bialik and painter Reuven Rubin are open to the public. On display in the Bialik home are the 94 books he wrote, that were translated into no less than 28 languages, while Rubin's studio is preserved as it was the day he made his last brush stroke.

Built on the dunes of the Mediterranean coast, the sands of time in the historical hourglass have not been kind to the former Town Hall in Bialik Square. When the city officials moved to their present multi-story municipal nerve center on Rehov Ibn Gvirol, the Rehov Bialik building became Tel Aviv's Historical Museum. Not so long afterwards, even that became history.

As mellow notes wafted through the windows from the music academy next door, the front windows of the museum were unceremoniously closed and shuttered. Some of Tel Aviv's historical paperwork and artifacts housed there were moved to the Tel Aviv museum, but a great deal was left packed in cardboard boxes inside the shell of the building that housed Zionist builders and community leaders of yesteryear.

Eye-catching Bauhaus design buildings, large and small, can be found in almost every side street off Allenby. However, some of the most impressive in the mortar and brick collection are found along Rothschild Boulevard. Here, almost every other building is mentioned in the history books of the city. In recent years, many have undergone expensive restoration work and now house the offices of prestigious law firms or other businesses. Bauhaus aficionados lick their fingers with appreciation at such a rich selection of asymmetrical facades, horizontal lines, and pretty wrought iron fenced balconies - some adorned with wooden window shutters.

A few minutes walk away, leading off the other side of Rehov Allenby, is Nachlat Binyamin, one of Tel Aviv's oldest neighborhoods.

Here again, one sees many buildings that combine Middle East and European motifs - either after the bucket and cement brigade have done their most professional restoration work or in the process of being restored to remnants of their former glory. Some buildings, however, are still sadly dilapidated and boarded up, but hopefully on the Nachlat Binyamin Development Company's short order book.

The neighborhood becomes a thriving mass of hustle, bustle, and color as scores of stalls are set up on Tuesday and Fridays for one of the best artisans' fairs to be found anywhere. Many of the stallholders are as colorful in character as the objects they sell. Some create new pieces with their nimble fingers, working with wood, paper, glass, clay, soft materials, and even metal as potential customers jostle each other to see what there is to see.

Sitting under shade parasols, the artisans work away making toys, trinkets, wood or silk flowers, clocks of clay where time stands still, or gaily decorated hand-painted boxes from matchbox to treasure trove size. There are beautifully sculpted wax candles, but who could put a match to such a thing?

With street performers on stilts, others with unmoving faces covered in white powder who seem to be frozen, and music makers playing in twos or threes, there is definitely something for everybody.

After a day spotting the unique buildings and soaking up the Nachlat Binyamin atmosphere, one definitely will need an afternoon siesta - because at night, who sleeps in Tel Aviv?