אוסף אסיאו - מלון 'עדן' ירושלים

The Eden Hotel has a special place in the history of Jerusalem and the Jewish settlement in Israel. The story begins with the Marshak Hotel which consisted of 5 rooms, in Nachalat Shiva. It was run by the Marshak couple. Each room contained 4 beds. There was a small lounge which served as the reception and the dining room. In 1919 the hotel moved to Zion Square and a few more rooms were added. Upon the death of the Marshak couple, the hotel management passed to their daughter, Rosa (born in 1902) and her husband Ze'ev Avraham Lifschitz (born in 1898). The hotel developed a good reputation due to the cleanliness and order and the delicious cooking of Rosa, and the demand for hotel rooms grew. As a result the couple decided to rent a larger building to house their hotel. They chose a building on Ben Yehuda Street #5 that was owned by the pediatrician, Dr. Helena Kagan. In 1929, after renovating the building, the hotel, which was comprised of 25 rooms, was opened to the public. They changed the name of the hotel to Eden Hotel. In 1932 Rosa Lifschitz went to Switzerland to study Hotel Management for a few months. In light of the success of the hotel, Rosa and Avraham Lifschitz decided to build a larger building on Hahistadrut Street. The procured a loan from the Feuchtwanger Bank. They hired the services of the architect Yochanan Rettner (who eventually became a general in the army and a professor of architecture at the Technion). The architect, Werner Yosef Witkover was in charge of the interior design. With the outbreak of the riots in 1936, while the plans for expanding the hotel were being made, there was a decline in the hotel business. They managed to keep the hotel open and even began building the new building, which opened in the spring of 1938. The new hotel had 40 rooms, half of which were en-suite, and was built in an 'international Israeli style'. The new Eden Hotel had a large lobby, writing room, a dining room for 150 guests and a large dance hall. Later a coffee shop and restaurant, with a nice garden were added in the back yard. As the building was situated near the buildings of the national institutions and the Knesset building, the hotel had many important guests. They included heads of the Yishuv and the heads of the government. It seems that many important meetings, that influenced the fate of the new State, were held in the rooms of the hotel. The Lifschitz family lived in the hotel and managed it. They also employed a number of new immigrants from Germany and Europe who had experience running hotels. During WWII and in the days following, the hotel flourished. In the evenings parties were held for British officers and for the heads of the Yishuv and for the high society. Some of the guests included: Chaim Weizman, David Ben-Gurion, Orde Wingate, Nachum Goldman, Henrietta Szold, the conductor Leonard Bernstein and others. For many years it was difficult to get a room in the hotel without a reservation. It's proximity to the Fruman House, the temporary Knesset building, made it a prime location. David Ben-Gurion stayed there many times during the period 1948-1949, up until the time when a permanent dwelling was arranged for the Prime Minister. Another important guest was the author, Shai Agnon, and in this album there are pictures of the celebration dinner in honor of his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Rosa Lifschitz passed away in 1967. Her daughter Chaya (Assio) took over the hotel management and worked in the hotel until the death of her father in 1972. Chaya was born in 1920, and her childhood passed in the hotel. She completed her studies in the Hebrew Gymnasia in Rehavia and went on to study in the Academy of Music. Chaya moved to London and was a radio announcer for the BBC. There she met her husband, Avraham Assio. Avraham, born in Bulgaria, a graduate of the Herziliya Gymnasia, studied theater and production and in 1948 travelled to London. In 1962 the couple returned to Israel and Avraham ran the School of Theater 'Beit Tzvi' in addition to his work as a producer, until 1970. The couple had a son and a daughter. In 1973 the building was sold to the Bank of Israel and in the '80's to the Ministry of Immigration. In the beginning of the 21st century there was a plan to re-open the hotel and add stories for apartments. The pictures in this album were given to the archives at Yad Ben-Zvi by Meira Assio, the first wife of Gilad (the son of Chaya Assio Lifschitz) and her son Yonatan Assio. اقرأ أكثر