The Casino - which despite its name was never a casino - on the sea front at Bat Galim in 1947 [Credit: public domain; The David B. Keidan Collection of Digital Images from the Central Zionist Archives]
Bat Galim - literally "daughter of the waves" - is a neighborhood to the south of Haifa, at the foot of Mt Carmel on the Mediterranean coast, a little faded in its glory, with promenade and sandy beaches. It was the first point of Jewish settlement in modern Haifa. It has been neglected and abandoned for many years, though there remain many determined locals, and some of the old properties along the sea shore are being restored. Others remain bricked up with cinder blocks - to avoid property taxes - presumably by owners without the means to restore them, but who are loathe to demolish such potentially valuable real estate. Which is tragic, when you consider that the promenade houses are within metres of one of the most beautiful beaches in Israel, closer to the shoreline than almost anywhere else in the country.
Architect Zvi Skolnik, a Bat Galim resident for over 40 years, has called the neighborhood an "inventory of public housing history," beginning with housing built for British soldiers that is now designated for preservation. The neighborhood was planned by the Bauhaus architect, Richard Kaufmann, in 1922 as a garden suburb of private homes. Its first houses were planned by architects including Alexander Baerwald, who designed the Technion University campus, and Joseph Barsky, who designed the famous Herzliya Gymnasium - two of the leading architects from the "Israeli Period" of the twentieth century, which supplemented Templar structures that were already there. More modern structures were built later and, at the end of Bat Galim Boulevard, right on the water's edge, the now-abandoned Casino Bat Galim was built in 1935, designed by Alfred Goldberger (pictured above). There are still a number of houses from the 20's and 30's - some in the international style, others in a curiously English style - which stand out in contrast to the subsequent public housing developments which mar the scene.
Civic planning is something that ended in Bat Galim when the British left, and although there have been various plans put forward - good and bad, such as a 30 year old threat to build a marina, a euphemism for luxury apartment complexes destroying the promenade - nothing much has happened to date other than a number of public works.
During the British Mandate period, Bat Galim was Haifa's entertainment center, as well as a center for water sports, thanks in both cases to the Casino. This institution - which never hosted gambling - was home to a dance club, bar and restaurant, as well as a cinema, theatre and Olympic-sized, outdoor swimming pool that filled up with sea water. It was popular with British officers and the city's elite.
"The Casino" and pool between 1940 and 1946 — with "The Kiosk" to the left of the Casino [Credit: public domain; Library of Congress]
Even though the Casino folded as a venue in the 1980s, it remained standing until, in the 990s, it was sold to a developer who, after it was declared that sea water had damaged the foundations, demolished it completely, rebuilding it as an exact copy from scratch on new foundations. However the developer went bankrupt as soon as the new cement skeleton had been poured, and the building has stood empty and forlorn, fenced off, ever since. Whether any fittings salvaged from the interior of the original building remain safely stored somewhere is anyone's guess. The building has recently been bought by Gil Dankner, owner of Dor Chemicals, and it is feared that the building will eventually end up as a boutique hotel, rather than a public venue.
a few years ago they decided to fix it up. Instead of renovating it the contractor was allowed to destroy it and then rebuild it. He indeed destroyed the building, and along with it the Olympic-sized swimming pool that still filled up with sea water in 1935. He poured a cement skeleton in the shape of the old building, and then went bankrupt. After glancing at the depressing picture of the Casino today, scroll down to see a compilation video of the building's history (with Hebrew commentary, but self-explanatory nonetheless).
"The Casino" today [Credit: creative commons; Dr. Avishai Teicher]
Victor Cohen House, at Retsif Pinhas Margolin 35, the residence of Victor Cohen, an official from the PICA (Palestine Jewish Colonization Association), built in 1925 in eclectic (English?) style. A pyramidal roof to the tower room - which rather unromantically houses a WC - had been removed in recent years (left), but when I visited a few weeks later a new one had been attached (right)!
Beit Hamawi (בית חמאוי); you can see this house in slightly better times, together with the Casino and the rest of the promenade, in the video below from 2014.
A new house going up in the old style - or an over-restored old house perhaps?
Modern public housing, with Mount Carmel and the Stella Maris monastery beyond.
Away from the promenade, on Sderot Bat Galim (Bat Galim Boulevard), is a rather lovely house. Samsonov House was designed by Yosef Barsky, one of the first houses to be built in Bat Galim, in 1921, for Dr Yitzhak Samsonov.
Dr Samsonov was a veterinary surgeon, the son of Aryeh Leib Samsonov, one of the founders of Hadera.On 9th – 10th July 1922, the Association of Hebrew Veterinary Surgeons in Eretz Israel (today the Israel Veterinary Medical Association) was founded in the house in the presence of four of the seven veterinary surgeons of that time, Dr Samsonov, Dr Moshe Caspi, Dar Yaakov Neria and Dr Yosef Shem-Tov. There is an historical plaque on the wall of the house to this effect.
In 1930, having moved to escape the riots of 1929 in Jerusalem, the wife and children of SY Agnon (later Nobel Laureate for Literature), lived here. Agnon’s short story, The Sign, mentions a young veterinary surgeon who saved pre-state Israel from cattle-plague. This was based on the real-life Shem-Tov (Sinto) Yosef, who later would be known as Dr Yosef Shem-Tov, an immigrant from Serres in northeastern Greece. You can read more about him, and his portrayal in Agnon’s story, here.
And finally, a slideshow of the promenade and Mediterranean.
