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  • משאלת חורבן: חייו ומותו של בניין גימנסיה "הרצליה" / אור אלכסנדרוביץ'

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    פורסם בתוך: גיא רז (עורך), ימי הגימנסיה (ספר תערוכה), תל אביב 2013, עמ' 47-26 A Wish for Destruction: The Life and Death of the Herzliya Gymnasium Building / Or Aleksandrowicz The imminent threat of destruction and the latent wish for it are both present in the story of the Herzliya Gymnasium’s building from its very beginning. The building was targeted by bold projects which regarded its removal a first, necessary step in the ultimate revolution of Tel Aviv's cityscape, or at least or at least for "breaking out" of its early planners’ shortsightedness. At the same time, the Gymnasium’s founders and senior teachers turned their backs on the building. They offered a variety of reasons for this choice, all aimed at concealing the embarrassing gap between the grandiose phraseology that had surrounded the construction of the building and its everyday decrepit reality. Thus, the physical destruction of the building—a structure that had been overburdened with symbolic meaning, before it had even been built—was not the result of momentary lapse of reason, but the culmination of long and deliberate process that was accompanied by an apologetic tragicomedy of excuse-mongering. As a result, the Gymnasium building lapsed into a moribund state of death-in-life already in the early stages of its existence. The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium building was built in the course of 1909-10, at the height of a wave of messianism that had swept Zionists in Eretz-Israel. This general mood was the combined result of the powerful impact of Political Zionism’s early nationalist rhetoric and the momentary sense of euphoria which the Young Turk Revolution had inspired across Ottoman Palestine. Since it was intended to serve the propagandist aim of securing the spiritual status of Ahuzat Bait (later to become Tel Aviv) as the center of a revivalist Zionist Hebraism, it is not surprising that the building was situated at the focal point of the new neighborhood’s main street. Equally significant was the style that informed the building’s facades, which had been conceived by Bezalel Art Academy founder Boris Schatz and architect Yosef Barsky. The result of their efforts—especially in the building’s monumental portal—incorporated motifs copied almost exactly from French architect Charles Chipiez’s imaginative reconstructions of the Temple in Jerusalem. As with other religious symbols and concepts which Zionism had converted for its own needs and aims, here too the sacred images used to construct a secular shrine to Hebraism imbued the entire building with a messianic tension that went far beyond its earthly functions and purposes. As architectural taste changed, the same visual elements that were used to attract attention to the building, as well as its deliberate positioning at the center of the world’s first Hebrew city, started to come under criticism. From the 1930s onwards, the Yishuv’s wholehearted embrace of architectural modernism with its ahistorical state of mind went in complete opposition to the architectural approach of the previous generation, which had tried to make use of the past in order to design the language of the present. The Gymnasium building—a dominant representative of the Hebraic style in Eretz-Israeli architecture—now began to be perceived either as an abomination, or at least as a grotesque expression of the architectural eccentricities of the past. This devaluation on the part of the arbiters of architectural taste made the work of the city’s municipality and the Gymnasium’s administration much easier, as both bodies sought to dispose of the building. The suggestion to get rid of the “obstruction” on Herzl Street was proposed already in 1913. The idea was to extend the street through the Gymnasium’s grounds and thus to correct what was regarded as a grave design flaw—caused by an early lack of faith in the potential fast expansion of the city northwards. This plan did not materialize, for the development of the area nor

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    פורסם בתוך: גיא רז (עורך), ימי הגימנסיה (ספר תערוכה), תל אביב 2013, עמ' 47-26 A Wish for Destruction: The Life and Death of the Herzliya Gymnasium Building / Or Aleksandrowicz The imminent threat of destruction and the latent wish for it are both present in the story of the Herzliya Gymnasium’s building from its very beginning. The building was targeted by bold projects which regarded its removal a first, necessary step in the ultimate revolution of Tel Aviv's cityscape, or at least or at least for "breaking out" of its early planners’ shortsightedness. At the same time, the Gymnasium’s founders and senior teachers turned their backs on the building. They offered a variety of reasons for this choice, all aimed at concealing the embarrassing gap between the grandiose phraseology that had surrounded the construction of the building and its everyday decrepit reality. Thus, the physical destruction of the building—a structure that had been overburdened with symbolic meaning, before it had even been built—was not the result of momentary lapse of reason, but the culmination of long and deliberate process that was accompanied by an apologetic tragicomedy of excuse-mongering. As a result, the Gymnasium building lapsed into a moribund state of death-in-life already in the early stages of its existence. The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium building was built in the course of 1909-10, at the height of a wave of messianism that had swept Zionists in Eretz-Israel. This general mood was the combined result of the powerful impact of Political Zionism’s early nationalist rhetoric and the momentary sense of euphoria which the Young Turk Revolution had inspired across Ottoman Palestine. Since it was intended to serve the propagandist aim of securing the spiritual status of Ahuzat Bait (later to become Tel Aviv) as the center of a revivalist Zionist Hebraism, it is not surprising that the building was situated at the focal point of the new neighborhood’s main street. Equally significant was the style that informed the building’s facades, which had been conceived by Bezalel Art Academy founder Boris Schatz and architect Yosef Barsky. The result of their efforts—especially in the building’s monumental portal—incorporated motifs copied almost exactly from French architect Charles Chipiez’s imaginative reconstructions of the Temple in Jerusalem. As with other religious symbols and concepts which Zionism had converted for its own needs and aims, here too the sacred images used to construct a secular shrine to Hebraism imbued the entire building with a messianic tension that went far beyond its earthly functions and purposes. As architectural taste changed, the same visual elements that were used to attract attention to the building, as well as its deliberate positioning at the center of the world’s first Hebrew city, started to come under criticism. From the 1930s onwards, the Yishuv’s wholehearted embrace of architectural modernism with its ahistorical state of mind went in complete opposition to the architectural approach of the previous generation, which had tried to make use of the past in order to design the language of the present. The Gymnasium building—a dominant representative of the Hebraic style in Eretz-Israeli architecture—now began to be perceived either as an abomination, or at least as a grotesque expression of the architectural eccentricities of the past. This devaluation on the part of the arbiters of architectural taste made the work of the city’s municipality and the Gymnasium’s administration much easier, as both bodies sought to dispose of the building. The suggestion to get rid of the “obstruction” on Herzl Street was proposed already in 1913. The idea was to extend the street through the Gymnasium’s grounds and thus to correct what was regarded as a grave design flaw—caused by an early lack of faith in the potential fast expansion of the city northwards. This plan did not materialize, for the development of the area nor

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    משאלת חורבן: חייו ומותו של בניין גימנסיה "הרצליה" / אור אלכסנדרוביץ'

    Uploaded by

    Or Aleksandrowicz
    פורסם בתוך: גיא רז (עורך), ימי הגימנסיה (ספר תערוכה), תל אביב 2013, עמ' 47-26 A Wish for Destruction: The Life and Death of the Herzliya Gymnasium Building / Or Aleksandrowicz The imminent threat of destruction and the latent wish for it are both present in the story of the Herzliya Gymnasium’s building from its very beginning. The building was targeted by bold projects which regarded its removal a first, necessary step in the ultimate revolution of Tel Aviv's cityscape, or at least or at least for "breaking out" of its early planners’ shortsightedness. At the same time, the Gymnasium’s founders and senior teachers turned their backs on the building. They offered a variety of reasons for this choice, all aimed at concealing the embarrassing gap between the grandiose phraseology that had surrounded the construction of the building and its everyday decrepit reality. Thus, the physical destruction of the building—a structure that had been overburdened with symbolic meaning, before it had even been built—was not the result of momentary lapse of reason, but the culmination of long and deliberate process that was accompanied by an apologetic tragicomedy of excuse-mongering. As a result, the Gymnasium building lapsed into a moribund state of death-in-life already in the early stages of its existence. The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium building was built in the course of 1909-10, at the height of a wave of messianism that had swept Zionists in Eretz-Israel. This general mood was the combined result of the powerful impact of Political Zionism’s early nationalist rhetoric and the momentary sense of euphoria which the Young Turk Revolution had inspired across Ottoman Palestine. Since it was intended to serve the propagandist aim of securing the spiritual status of Ahuzat Bait (later to become Tel Aviv) as the center of a revivalist Zionist Hebraism, it is not surprising that the building was situated at the focal point of the new neighborhood’s main street. Equally significant was the style that informed the building’s facades, which had been conceived by Bezalel Art Academy founder Boris Schatz and architect Yosef Barsky. The result of their efforts—especially in the building’s monumental portal—incorporated motifs copied almost exactly from French architect Charles Chipiez’s imaginative reconstructions of the Temple in Jerusalem. As with other religious symbols and concepts which Zionism had converted for its own needs and aims, here too the sacred images used to construct a secular shrine to Hebraism imbued the entire building with a messianic tension that went far beyond its earthly functions and purposes. As architectural taste changed, the same visual elements that were used to attract attention to the building, as well as its deliberate positioning at the center of the world’s first Hebrew city, started to come under criticism. From the 1930s onwards, the Yishuv’s wholehearted embrace of architectural modernism with its ahistorical state of mind went in complete opposition to the architectural approach of the previous generation, which had tried to make use of the past in order to design the language of the present. The Gymnasium building—a dominant representative of the Hebraic style in Eretz-Israeli architecture—now began to be perceived either as an abomination, or at least as a grotesque expression of the architectural eccentricities of the past. This devaluation on the part of the arbiters of architectural taste made the work of the city’s municipality and the Gymnasium’s administration much easier, as both bodies sought to dispose of the building. The suggestion to get rid of the “obstruction” on Herzl Street was proposed already in 1913. The idea was to extend the street through the Gymnasium’s grounds and thus to correct what was regarded as a grave design flaw—caused by an early lack of faith in the potential fast expansion of the city northwards. This plan did not materialize, for the development of the area nor

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    Photos: Aliyahu Kaminer / Authors private collection

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