Pagoda House

The house got its name because of the sloping shape of its roof, which resembles a Japanese pagoda. The house was built in 1925 by Maurice (Moshe David) Bloch, a wealthy widower who emigrated to America in the early 20th century and repatriated to Israel at the end of the First World War . The house was designed by architect Alexander Levy . But according to eyewitnesses, the house project did not satisfy Bloch and his American friends recommended him an American architect of Japanese descent. The architect drew the house, but he did not take into account that it was necessary to add balconies in Tel Aviv. And so the city municipality rejected this project. Forcibly, the project returned to the table of Alexander Levy, and he improved it by adding balconies.

In 1935, the first passenger elevator in Tel Aviv was installed in the house, a kind of cage that is located between flights of stairs. The elevator was installed by a young electrical engineer, a repatriate from South Africa, Yehuda Gezuntheim. The elevator shaft was dug up and concreted by engineer Jacob Orenstein .

In the same year, a central heating system was installed in the house, which replaced the wood heating, which served 10 years for heating the house and heating water.

The house had three floors. On the first lived the relatives of Bloch. Subsequently , Shablov, the head of the newspaper Ha-Arets, lived there. The widowed flea lived on the second floor, in the south wing, whose windows looked onto Montefiori Street. On the balcony, Bloch used to hang three flags - the United States of America , Great Britain and the Zionist Organization. On the same floor there lived a nurse, who looked after him. When selling a house, Bloch set the condition that she could live in this house until the end of her days. In the 30s, the Polish consulate was located on the third floor of the building. The Consul, Dr. Dov Hausner (father of Gideon Hausner, Attorney at the Eichmann Trial ) lived there, in the other wing of the building. Then on the roof of the building put a weather vane in the form of a rooster, symbolizing the government of Yu. Pilsudsky . At the end of the war, the residents of the consulate left the house. After them, two families settled here: the family of Dr. Hayat, who was a plastic surgeon, and the family of Dr. Wolf, one of whose daughters married industrialist Stef Wertheimer.

In addition to three floors, there was also a courtyard in which Mendel Steiner opened a flower shop in 1937 . And there was also a cellar that served as a bomb shelter in World War II . In 1942, Flea died, the flags were removed, the house changed owners. Small offices and workshops appeared in it. And the "House of Dreams" began to decline. In the 60s, Mrs. Mandelbaum, who lived on the ground floor, was allowed to place a synagogue in her apartment. Mrs. Mandelbaum was the last of the tenants living in 2000 .

The building fell into disrepair and in the 90s was bought by the famous Tel Aviv construction contractor Jacob Peled for $ 6 million. In the following years, it remained in the same condition (the contractor did not have money for reconstruction) until it was bought out by the Swedish billionaire businessman Robert Wyle . He invested about 90 million dollars in the reconstruction and turned it into a luxury villa in the city center. The house has 4 floors. In the basement there is a cinema hall, a wine cellar and a huge technical compartment (fully computerized), which controls all the systems in the house. On the ground floor there is a swimming pool and massage parlor. The owner does not live all year in his house. He comes only for Christmas. When he is in Israel, the Swedish and Israeli flags are posted. For the rest of the time, a Jewish family lives in the house, who is responsible for maintaining the cleanliness and condition of the house.

Three arches of the facade of the second floor as three naves of the cathedral invite Christian basilicas in the early Middle Ages. Above them, on the third floor, are the strict Doric columns of the Greek temple. Even higher is an open pavilion surrounded by rectangular pillars with lancet arches in the Moorish style . All this is crowned with a step pyramid, a silhouette resembling a Japanese pagoda, hence the name of the whole house. The facade overlooking the square connects two independent wings parallel to the streets of Montefiori and Nakhmani.

In fact, the building resembles a pagoda only at first glance: in addition to Buddhist, it also has oriental motifs, there is also a modernist style. Ideological integrity in buildings of this type is not pursued, the main purpose of such a mishmash is to demonstrate chic and luxury.

Buildings of this type were popular in those years in America, sometimes new ones are built in this style (in particular, in Las Vegas).

• Israeli architecture

• Yosi Goldberg, Shula Vidrich , Dr. Irit Amit-Amit-Cohen. Tel Aviv. Discovered city = תל-אביב.עיר גלויה. - Ahiasaf and Opus , 2009 .-- P. 188-192. - 302 p. - ISBN 37-1790. Archived March 6, 2016 on Wayback Machine

• Beit Hagoda , Tel Aviv Municipality Archive Site
• Jewish pagoda (inaccessible link) , jewish.ru portal
• Tel Aviv Pagoda House , LookAtIsrael.com Blog