I have been watching the decline of the pre-state post office building on Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa, one of the city's most marvelous buildings, for a long time. When I visited there this week, the device for distributing numbers for the lines of post office customers was out of order, there was no air-conditioner, the people waiting in line were tense, and the two post office workers behind the old counter looked like they were having a hard time.
The place looked like a relic of another era - the forgotten colonial and elegant pre-1948 period of the British Mandate. To round out the picture, you could see a bare-legged girl washing the floor behind the counters. What I found especially disturbing in my visit to this historic postal branch, however, was the "for rent" sign attached with plastic zip ties to the bars facing Jerusalem Boulevard.
The power of government
It is impossible to exaggerate the cultural importance of the post office. During the colonial period, the post office buildings were an important element of the urban experience. Proper communications were a basic requirement for the development of economic and diplomatic ties, and postal, telegraph, and telephone services were run by the government. The investment in architecture was designed to symbolize to the city's residents and visitors the importance of the imperial government.
The architect of the building was Austen St. Barbe Harrison, who was employed in the public works department of the British Mandate in the Land of Israel. Harrison lived in Israel for a relatively short period, but he was responsible for many important buildings that became icons, including the post office building on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, the Rockefeller Museum, the British High Commissioner's residence in Jerusalem, and the courthouse in Haifa on Hassan Shukri Street (now the State Comptroller's Office).
The building he designed in Jaffa is four storeys high. The design of its facade combines European architecture with an oriental style. The ground floor is twice as high as the others, and has large curved windows, while the two top floors have smaller orthogonal windows. In the building's facades, Harrison played with shades of finishing from local cemented dune and imported limestone. The front of the building is now rather neglected, but its great splendor is still noticeable. The building has large wooden doors, metal bars made by a craftsman blacksmith, and floors of imported marble. Renovations made over the years have largely destroyed the interior decoration.
A documentation file for the building collected by Tel Aviv University architectural students shows that while the building was classed as a public building in the 1960s, in a 1997 urban plan, it appears as a Category A building for preservation. Its zoning is "special," however, meaning that it can be used for a variety of public purposes. The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality says that any use sought for the building will have to meet criteria for use of a public character.
Israel Postal Company VP communications Noy Kedem Madmon is satisfied with the number of inquiries received after the "for rent" sign was posted. She says that she believes that it shows the business potential of what she calls a "real estate asset."
The 2016 State Comptroller's Report severely criticized the Postal Company's functioning. Among other things, there are difficulties in providing international postal service, the company's serious deficit, and the absence of a strategic recovery plan. Only this week, "Globes" reported the sale of a building belonging to the Postal Company on Ben Zvi Boulevard in Tel Aviv. It can be assumed that leasing the building in Jaffa is part of an attempt to leverage the company's real estate properties, like Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (TASE: BEZQ), for the purpose of putting the postal company back on its feet.
Tamar Tuchler, who is responsible for the Tel Aviv district on behalf of the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel, has been working for a long time to promote awareness of preservation on Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa, which was once an elegant main street, and is now a rather neglected traffic artery. "The post office building is important as one of the important elements on Jerusalem Boulevard," she says. "It has great architectural, social, and municipal significance. Studies led by Amnon Bar of Tel Aviv University and Shmuel Groag from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design cite the great wealth of the street, together with its neglect and lack of proper treatment."
Tuchler says that the fact that the building is marked for preservation is an achievement in itself. She mentions other buildings in Jaffa that have not survived, such as the Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI) building, the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22) transformer, and the Customs House building in the port, which is at risk of demolition. In Tuchler's opinion, making secondary use of the building is not a problem. "Theoretically, there is no problem in a different public use being made of the building in the framework of its renovation, as long as the internal spaces are fully preserved. Recycling buildings is acceptable now."
Vered Navon, a Jaffa resident who has been investigating Jerusalem Boulevard in recent years, notes that what was special about the street for many years was its cultural continuity. The architects on the street were sensitive to context, and there was an affinity between the ones who created the buildings on the street and their predecessors.
Navon is alarmed about the rezoning of the building, and says, "A private concern will renovate the building very nicely, but its community use is liable to be lost. It disturbs me that architectural preservation does not include preservation of its substance." Navon mentions the Alhambra movie theater, which became a Scientology center, and says that this must not happen with the post office building. In the end, she emphasizes, it is the only building that has preserved its original use.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on June 28, 2017
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