I can’t remember what made me look up Arpad Gut today on the internet. I think i was looking for a picture of the casino that he built in the 20′s.
It was the first thing he built when he came to Palestine, and it was designed by people from Odessa who were imitating the buildings on the Black Sea. Now between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean there must have been significant differences, and Arpad Gut, who was an expert in big bridges, must have known that the salt water, the winds,and the sun, would cause serious damage rather quickly, but he was probably trying to test his new inventions, and built it anyway. He filled burlap bags with concrete and used them to support the foundations built right in the sea, says Ezi. And/or he poured the concrete into molds while the nozzle remained in the concrete under water. That must have been what gave him a sense of unique accomplishment. But the rest of the building didn’t last. By the mid thirties it was abandoned, and it was blown up in 1939.
In the mean time he was busy with other projects in Tel Aviv, as basic as the sewers of the city, and as noble as the dome of the Great Synagogue
And watertowers, the largest of them on Mazeh Street.
While I was looking for a picture I found this drawing by Carol Feldman here and it led me to some other of her amazing pictures of Tel Aviv. How wonderful to have discovered her present work while on an exploratory journey of the past.
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