Academic OhadSmith Hotel Design

Hotel design in British Mandate Palestine: Modernism and the Zionist vision Daniella Ohad Smith* From the earl y 1920s thr oug h the 193 0s, an important yet for got ten avant- gard e 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 signiﬁ cant structures in their locales and design ed by leading local architec ts educat ed in some of Europe’s most progressive schools, these hotels were conceived along ide olo gica l lines and repr esen ted a synthe sis of soci al requir emen ts, cutt ing -edge aest het ics, and uto pia n nat ional ide als. They resp onded to a comple x mixtur e of sent ime nts, inc lud ing Eur ope an stan dar ds of mod ern comfor t and the longin g 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 style; Palestine tourism; Eden Hotel; King David Hotel; Pal ace Hot el; Ale xander Baer wal d; Jul ius Berg er; Jose f Fra nk; Gus tave-Adol phe Hufschmid; Alexander Koch; Leopold Krakauer; Abraham Lifschitz; Julius Posener; Yohanan Ratner; Emil Vogt; Werner Joseph Wittkower Modernism in hotel design – at least on a large and popular scale – has been credi ted as the postwar accomplishment of Conrad Hilton (1887–1979), father of the eponymous hotel chai n, whos e ma ss-produced formul a evol ved in the 1950s and 1960s. For the practical-minded Hilton, modern architecture was “oriented to the human scale [without any] attempt to impress with grandiose effects or to awe with ostentatious display; there is luxury without pretentiousness.” 1 However, the late 1920s through the 1930s, decades bef ore Hil ton ’s surge of act ivi ty, wit nes sed an impor tan t but for got ten ava nt -ga rde architectura l phenomenon: several dozen modernist hotels sprouted in the cities and resort regions of British Mandate Palestine (1917–48). Designed by leading progressive local architects traine d in Europe, these structures – often the most ambitious archit ecture of the regi on’s moder n buil t fabr ic – embo died social ideals and ideologi cal prin cipl es that synthesized a real need for modern infrastructure, futurist aesthetics, and utopian national aspirations. Their interiors, too, were important for their interpretation of a modernism adapted from the typical Jewish bourgeois home of Central Europe to the new homeland in Palestine . A close relationship between hotel design and political and national aspirations has marked many cultures. 2 This was certainly true for Zionist Palestine. There, hotel culture and modern design emerged particularly in the late 1920s but assumed greater visibility with the so-c alle d Fift h Aliyah, the wave of immi gra tio n to Pales tin e of the 1930s. ISSN 1353-1042 print/ISSN 1744-0548 online q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13531041003595035 http://www.informaworld.com *Email: [email protected] The Journal of Israe li Histo ry Vol. 29, No. 1, March 2010, 99–123

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