Page 320 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

Joseph Berlin (1877-1952)
Joseph Berlin was one of the most renowned architects in the Land of Israel during the British Mandate. A native of Ukraine (then Czarist Russia), he worked in his field in Russia and won many awards. He made Aliya in 1921 and opened an architectural firm in Tel Aviv. His choice of building with white silicate bricks, without plaster on the outside, is particularly memorable. Among the buildings he planned: The first power plant of the Electric Corporation on HaHashmal Street in Tel Aviv, the Moghrabi Theatre, apartment buildings in Tel Aviv and his own house on the corner of Rothschild and Balfour, which remains standing to this day and emphasizes the silicate brick walls.
Berlin submitted a joint proposal to the competition with Richard Pasovsky (see entry on him below). His son Ze'ev joined him in his work and submitted a separate proposal to the competition.
Ze'ev Berlin was born in Tel Aviv. He studied architecture in Brussels, returned to the Land of Israel in 1931 and joined his father's firm, Joseph Berlin. In 1936, he moved to Haifa and opened an independent firm. The influence of the modernism he absorbed during his studies in Belgium are apparent in the buildings that were built by the father and the son in Tel Aviv. Prominent among them are the Rubinsky House on the corner of Rothschild and Maze and the "Haaretz" Newspaper Building on 56 Maze Street – both were built in 1932 in the international style.
Lotte Cohn was a native of Germany and one of the first women in the Land of Israel that was granted an architectural certificate. She made Aliya in 1921 upon the invitation of the architect Richard Kauffmann, and worked alongside him until 1927 – when the architectural offices of the Land Development Company in Jerusalem closed – in planning hundreds of agricultural settlements, neighborhoods and many structures. Afterwards, she worked in the firm of Austen Harrison, the Chief Architect for the Public Works Department of the Mandate Government in Jerusalem. In 1931, she moved to Tel Aviv, where she made her mark upon private houses and institutions that she planned herself, including the Kaete Dan Hotel on the Tel Aviv shore (where now stands the Dan Hotel). She participated in a series of architectural competitions in the Land of Israel and abroad. From the early Thirties and until the establishment of the state, she planned houses and complexes, including the "Rassco" Neighborhood near Yehuda HaMakkabbi Street in Tel Aviv. She planned many houses in settlements of immigrants from Germany, such as Kfar Shmaryahu and Ramot HaShavim. Lotte Cohn has been repeatedly defined as the "Mother of Architecture in Israel".
Ze'ev Berlin (1909-1967)
Lotte Cohn (1893-1983)
318