Page 319 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

Benjamin Anekstein (1903-1949)
Benjamin Anekstein, a native of Belorussia within the Czarist Empire (currently Belarus), made aliya in 1920 when he was 17, and began to work at various architectural firms (working as a construction worker with the contractor Y. Magidovitch, and began working as draftsman in 1924 at the firm of Berlin-Pasovsky). He participated in the competition for the National Institutions without having professional training as an architect. In 1928, he went to study at the Universities of Brussels and Ghent in Belgium. He worked in architectural firms in Belgium, Planning the Belgian Bank of Industry and returned to the Land of Israel in 1932. For twenty years, until his untimely death in 1949, he planned buildings within and outside of Tel Aviv. The building that is most identified with him is the KKL-JNF House on Zvi Hermann Schapira Street in central Tel Aviv, the planning for which he won in a competition in 1937. The house served as the "Government House" in 5708-1948 and the Declaration of Independence was drafted there. In addition, he planned, on his own and with others, the Gordon House – Nature Museum in Degania Alef, the "Dan" Garage in Tel Aviv and the houses of the Port workers on Bnei Dan Street in Tel Aviv. Between 1940 and 1945, he worked for the Public Works Office of the Mandate Government in Jerusalem and planed police stations.
On the thirtieth day to his passing, an exhibit of all his building plans was held at the Association of Engineers House in Tel Aviv.
Alexander Baerwald was born in Berlin, worked in Prussia and had first arrived to the Land of Israel in 1909. A year later, he arrived for a second time, and was asked then to plan the "Technicom" Building (the Technion today) in Haifa. Though the building was already built, the institution only opened its door in 1925. He also planned the Hebrew Reali School near the Technion Building.
Baerwald returned and made Aliya in the Twenties. He was among the first teachers in the Technion and headed the Faculty of Architecture. He combined eastern elements into the houses he built. He planned, among other buildings, the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Haifa, the "Cooperation" in Merhavia and the home of the artist Hermann Struck in Haifa, which is currently a museum. His final work was the planning of the central hospital in the Jezreel Valley, in which he had abandoned his efforts to formulate a local style inspired by the Arab architecture in the Middle East and planned it according to an international style.
Alexander Baerwald (1877-1930)
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