Exhibit Marks 100 Years of Geddes’ Town Plan

On April 11, 1909, 60 families gathered on the beach north of Jaffa to draw lots for the parcelization of the sand dunes they hand purchased north of the ancient port. Israel’s Mayflower moment has been much mythologized, but one thing is clear – those garden suburb pioneers were clueless about urban planning. They turned their backs on the site’s most notable feature — its iconic Mediterranean beach.

The village the founders initially named Ahuzat Bayit (Homestead) and today called Tel Aviv grew haphazardly, house by house — with an interruption during World War I (WWI) when the Ottoman Turks expelled the newly established town’s Jews. In 1921, following the arrival of the British during WWI and the replacement of their military rule with a civil administration, the growing suburb was granted township status separate from the neighboring Arab majority city of Jaffa.

It soon became clear that the township’s slapdash growth needed to be regulated. Into this planning chaos stepped Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), a Scottish-born polymath who was at once a biologist, sociologist, landscape theorist, and pioneering urban planner. A century later, the 62-page master urban plan he drew up remains among the most important documents in the history of the first Hebrew city. Liebling Haus — an architectural and cultural center located in downtown Tel Aviv, recently opened the exhibit “Life, Plant, City: 100 Years of Geddes’ Plan for Tel Aviv’s Garden City,” documenting how that vision continues to shape the city’s urban fabric.

In 1925, Geddes — who earned a reputation for his urban planning in 18 cities in British India — was invited by Tel Aviv’s mukhtar, Meir Dizengoff, to prepare the first master plan to guide the town’s growth. (Tel Aviv achieved city status in 1934.)

Geddes believed that cities were living organisms, shaped by the interplay of nature, society and culture. This holistic approach — unusual for its time — made him particularly attractive to Zionist leaders who envisioned Tel Aviv as both a future-facing modern metropolis and a cultural project rooted in Jewish history.

His plan was deeply influenced by the Garden City movement, but Geddes adapted it to the climate and social context of the Levant. It emphasized shaded streets to mitigate the Mediterranean heat, wide boulevards that encouraged airflow and social life, and parks and squares as communal anchors. Human-scale residential blocks arranged around shared green spaces and courtyards.

Geddes’ plan for a modern city extended Tel Aviv north from its early neighborhoods to the Yarkon River. It was delineated by the Mediterranean Sea to the west and what is now Ibn Gvirol Street to the east. Into this flat and featureless space, Geddes laid out a skein of streets with a clear hierarchy. Main north–south and east–west arteries allowed for speedy movement across the city. Secondary streets were narrower and designed for local circulation. Small residential lanes fostered neighborhood intimacy.

The goal was to create a walkable city that balanced efficiency with livability.

Geddes’ plan also contained what later scholars have identified as anarchist or cooperative elements. It emphasized worker-led housing blocs and resisted speculative land practices. These ideas resonated with the social and economic conditions of Tel Aviv in the 1920s and 1930s when workers wanted architecture that reflected their egalitarian values.

Although Geddes’ plan was not executed in its entirety, its core principles shaped the development of the White City, which was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. By the 1930s, Tel Aviv had some 4,000 blindingly white Bauhaus-style buildings constructed within the distinctive blocks, boulevards and public gardens Geddes laid out.

“Bauhaus” was a school of arts, crafts and architecture that operated in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The rise of the Nazi Party led to the shuttering of the academy. Many of its students fled Nazi Germany, and some settled in Mandate Palestine. There they created a revolutionary, streamlined architectural style that suited the modernist ethos of Zionism. Some 60,000 Jews left Germany and Austria for Mandatory Palestine, including architects who didn’t study at the Bauhaus school but were greatly influenced by its style.

Tel Aviv’s amalgam of Bauhaus, also called International Style, buildings arose from a happy accident of historical coincidence: first came Geddes’ revolutionary town plan; then, the wave of mass Aliyah triggered by the Nazis’ ascent to power in 1933 triggered an urgent demand for housing; and thirdly, the International Style’s lack of expensive decorative features made construction costs relatively low. For Yekke newcomers, many of whom had to leave significant assets behind in Germany, low construction costs that didn’t sacrifice style were a major draw.

The streamlined design with porthole windows, curved walls and balconies was a snub to the values of Central Europe which the newcomers had barely escaped.

“One thing that made it easier to adopt the International Style in Tel Aviv was the fact that it was very simple, for a society that couldn’t afford affluence,” Eran Neuman, an architecture professor, explained to Artsy. “On the one hand, it was pristine; on the other hand, you didn’t need a lot of money to build an International Style building.” No decorative tiles or ornamental plasterwork meant cheaper construction that could be executed by less-specialized craftsmen.

Liebling Haus, built in 1936, is an iconic example of this architectural era. While not designed by Geddes, it manifests the urban environment his plan made envisioned. The house’s clean lines, functional design and integration with the surrounding streetscape reflect the synergy between Geddes’ urbanism and the architectural modernism that followed.

Historic Tel Aviv Bauhaus Building Damaged by Iran Missile

A Bauhaus landmark built in 1937 at 123 Yehuda Halevi St. in Tel Aviv was heavily damaged by an Iranian missile on Feb. 28. That strike on the first day of war destroyed the adjoining more modern building, killing Filipina caregiver Mary Anne Velasquez de Vera, and wounding more than two dozen others.

“No one can live there right now,” architect Alon Bin Nun told the Times of Israel. Bin Nun, whose firm handled the apartment building’s restoration more than a decade ago, noted, “All the windows are broken; it’s uninhabitable for the moment.”

The ground floor cafe, Grasyani House, a beloved neighborhood bakery and coffee spot, was also destroyed in the missile blast.

The Home Front Command determined that a complete Iranian ballistic missile — not fragments — impacted next to the apartment building, causing extensive damage and a large crater. The missile carried a warhead of several hundred kilograms, the Home Front Command assessed.

“These houses were more than concrete and balconies,” wrote Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus Center on Instagram. “They were symbols of survival, modernity, and the rebuilding of life in Tel Aviv — the White City. Their clean lines and simple forms carried a powerful story: architecture as refuge, architecture as hope. We mourn the loss of this cultural heritage and stand committed to preserving the memory and values these buildings embodied.”

The building was originally constructed for Fruma Gourevitz, whose descendants still own much of the property, said Bin Nun. The first three floors of the building are family-owned, and some of the Gourevitz’s heirs still live there.

The Gourevitz building is located near the intersection of Yehuda Halevi and Shenkin Streets, across from a city park and part of the original streets of Ahuzat Bayit, the initial core of Tel Aviv that eventually expanded to today’s metropolis.