The Iranian rocket strike that killed Filipina caregiver Mary Anne Velasquez de Vera and injured over two dozen others on Saturday night as it destroyed an entire apartment building also devastated the historic building next door, one of the White City in Tel Aviv’s architectural treasures.
“No one can live there right now,” said architect Alon Bin Nun, whose firm handled the apartment building’s restoration more than ten years ago. “All the windows are broken; it’s uninhabitable for the moment.”
Bin Nun said someone sent him a message on Saturday night saying the rocket struck the block on which the building is located.
“I saw it on TV and could immediately identify it,” said Bin Nun.
The downstairs cafe, Grasyani House, a beloved neighborhood bakery and coffee spot, was also destroyed in the 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.
The building was relatively old, without its own safe rooms. Most residents had evacuated to a nearby public bomb shelter, according to the Home Front Command.
The historic building next door was a familiar landmark in the neighborhood, noted for the two external staircases with rounded walls and the busy ground-floor cafe.
“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 historic building was initially designated for preservation under what’s known as the Lev Ha’Iror City Center plan, associated with Tel Aviv’s designation as the White City for its concentration of International Style (Bauhaus) buildings, which earned the city its 2003 designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It was originally constructed for Fruma Gourevitz, whose descendants still own much of the building, said Bin Nun.
The first three floors of the building are family-owned, and some of the Gourevitz’s heirs still live there, said Bin Nun, even after the renovation and restoration.
The building at 123 Yehuda Halevi was initially designed and constructed between 1935 and 1937 in Bauhaus, the architectural style brought to pre-state Israel by German Jewish architects.
It was designed by Technion-trained architects Mordechai Zabrudsky and Yitzhak Belkes (who later changed his family name to Bonneh, “builder” in Hebrew), who partnered together after immigrating to pre-state Israel, from Ukraine and Poland respectively.
The two operated their firm for about six years, during a period of increased demand for residential buildings in Tel Aviv.
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.
