Mall and sprawl at the Israel Museum

This past summer vacation I happened to visit the Israel Museum for the first time since, perhaps, 2008. Because my recreational activities tend to be child-centered, and because my older boys would react with grimaces and groans in recent years whenever I suggested a Museum visit, I never got a first-hand look at the Museum’s highly-touted "renewal" until a few weeks ago, when I ventured there with my youngest child. All I could think was: they closed large portions of the Israel Museum for an extended period, and spent $100 million ...  and they couldn't plant a few trees?

It's a daunting task to criticize the Israel Museum, whose collections I'm always a little ashamed of not knowing better, and whose temporary exhibitions I'm often sorry I don't to get see (the "not getting to" is one of the main problems, see below). I'm certainly not qualified to judge the professional-curatorial aspects of the recent renovation. I'm perfectly willing to accept the consensus view that the organization of the displays is now more logical and user-friendly than it was before. In point of fact I have little basis for comparison, since my visits to the Museum, from the early 1990s up until the time the renovations started, were sporadic and, from the late 1990s on, conducted in a young-family context. I never expected to see more than a little bit of the art and archaeology stuff at a time, and was often restricted to the Youth Wing sandbox and the dim tunnel of the Shrine of the Book, which my kids, like everybody else's, related to as a kind of amusement-park funhouse.

What I find hard to grasp is that so considerable a sum of money was spent on refurbishing the Museum without addressing its inner-sprawl problem in a more meaningful way. The issue of the Museum's location -- sprawl in "macrocosm" -- is theoretically going to be addressed by urbanization plans for the surrounding area, which I discuss briefly below. But what about the grounds of the Museum "campus"  itself -- sprawl in "microcosm?"

Kiryat HaLe'om

The drawbacks of the Museum’s setting are no news to anyone. Its various structures are dispersed within a self-contained compound -- generally referred to as a "campus" -- in the city’s Givat Ram-Kiryat HaLe’om (“National Precinct”) area; the campus itself is surrounded by a sea of parking and separated from its nearest neighbors -- the Knesset, the Bloomfield Science Museum and the Hebrew University -- by a forbidding network of multi-lane roads. This setting has obvious implications for the Israel Museum’s ability to function as a public/urban amenity. You can't catch an exciting new exhibition in the course of a downtown shopping trip; you can't stop at the Museum after a stressful day at the office to decompress while contemplating a favorite painting.  It's not situated at a comfortable walking distance from anyone's place of employment. Were it more conveniently located, even a harried parent might have a shot at the occasional lunchtime gallery talk. But the Museum’s location precludes any chance at spontaneity: it's like a grand personage whom one can see only by appointment. You have to plan in advance and make an effort if you want to go to the Israel Museum.

Of course, the renovation was not meant to address the Museum’s location. Nobody thought of moving it to a part of town where it might be part of an interesting mix of uses, or be easily reached by people pursuing their everyday activities. No one wants to acknowledge that putting a major cultural institution on an isolated hilltop was a dumb idea. One could argue that moving the Museum would be impracticable at this point; yet one can’t help lamenting the single-use mindset that keeps us from arranging things effectively. The prevailing view in these parts seems to be that major museums need to be segregated in a specific of town, as with the planned removal of Jerusalem’s Natural History Museum from its longtime home in the German Colony -- near the shopping and eatery hub of Emek Refaim -- to  Kiryat HaLe’om. We also seem to think that a national museum has to be located in a national “precinct,” in deference to the Washingtonian model (and in contrast to, for instance, the Parisian model). There are indeed hopes of transforming Kiryat HaLe’om into something more than it now is. Anything would be an improvement -- even the current plans for  a local equivalent of Washington D.C.'s National Mall will surely produce something friendlier and more attractive than what currently exists. But will this be enough to bring the Israel Museum into the "city" -- to turn it into a destination for short, spontaneous visits as well as extended, pre-planned ones? That seems unlikely.

The original, American, National Mall is not generally thought of as a successful urban space. A lively debate is still going on about how to improve it; at the same time, no one appears to think the area can be turned into an exemplar of Jane Jacobs-style mixed-used urbanism. The best that seems to be hoped for is that specific portions of the Mall will be fixed up to make them more hospitable. So how optimistic can one be regarding Jerusalem's Kiryat HaLe'om? About a year ago I shared my concerns about how removing all government offices from Jerusalem's "historic downtown" would affect that part of the city -- turning it into a tourist-oriented Disneyland whose traditional, human-scale architecture houses pubs and cafes but little else of substance. The flip side of that is Kiryat HaLe'om -- a government-institution and national-monument enclave whose hypertrophic buildings are separated by lots of what Nathan Lewis would call Green Space. The public request for proposals that was issued in 2010 for the transformation of Jerusalem's Kiryat HaLe'om into a "central place in the life of the city" appears, on the surface, to encompass and link quite a few disparate elements ("culture, sports, leisure and recreation, tourist attractions, and events of a ceremonial, official, social and political character"). But does this really amount to a healthy mix of uses? Where's the (affordable) housing? Where's the (affordable, non-elitist) shopping?

I'm no urban fortune-teller; my crystal ball doesn't give me an entirely clear view of how the Municipality's visions of a lively pedestrian-oriented urban boulevard on Derech Ruppin will play out with Kiryat HaLe'om's existing and future iconic, monumental structures. But the plan for a new Museum of Natural History building, to be situated near the Bloomfield Science Museum, gives us more than a hint. In a Haaretz article, architect Gabi Schwartz, one of the winners of the Museum's planning competition, essentially ridicules the Jerusalem Municipality's hopes for urban vibrancy in Kiryat HaLe'om, remarking that the area is altogether chaotic and that the buildings in the vicinity do not "relate" to each other: "We felt that the battle here had already pretty much been lost, and we decided it was more important to preserve the site's green character." Haaretz reporter Noam Dvir goes on to note that the proposed building "presents no meaningful frontage to the surrounding streets, but rather retreats inward and entrenches itself underground. The main entrance from the Museum Boulevard is relatively obscure and situated in the shadow of one of the galleries."

That so major a project could have been awarded to an architect who publicly mocks the Municipality's hopes for urbanizing the area, speaks volumes about the future of Kiryat HaLe’om. The aforementioned Haaretz article notes that the planning competition's second- and third-place winners made more of an effort to relate to the urban fabric, meaning that the anti-urban choice must have been a deliberate one. One can't help but see parallels with the Israel Museum: a renewal plan by James Ingo Freed that (whatever its drawbacks) apparently encompassed a number of pro-urban and pro-human features was proposed in the late 1990s, only to be rejected following an outcry by Israel's architecture community -- which felt that it "dishonored" Alfred Mansfeld's original sprawling, user-hostile design. The renewal plan that was ultimately adopted -- the work of Efrat-Kowaski Architects and James Carpenter Design Associates -- both accommodates/reinforces the Museum's non-urban setting at the macro level and, at the micro level, perpetuates and sanctifies the campus' interior disunities and inhumanenesses.


The Israel Museum renewal

The renovation does seem to have pleased nearly all those charged with reviewing it in the media (with the exception of Esther Zandberg who fearlessly declares the emperor to be naked). The New York Times liked it, the Jerusalem Post liked it, Haaretz liked it. It is noted with satisfaction in these and other venues that you can now get to the collection wings via a climate-controlled passageway rather than facing the elements above ground. But is this really a cause for celebration? What are we ultimately left with? I'll summarize (to some degree merely echoing Zandberg, though with some added observations):

• There is a new “entrance compound” at the “front” of the Museum which does not welcome the visitor or signal to him in an orderly, unambiguous way that he has arrived at a major cultural venue; what one sees on one's approach are a couple of banal, boxy structures (resembling oversized utility cabinets) of unclear identity. The slightly larger box is the Museum shop or "retail pavilion", while the smaller one is the actual entrance pavilion, marked by a sign so unobtrusive that many visitors who arrive by bus surely turn toward the store before noticing their error. Visitors who arrive by car (presumably the vast majority) reach the store before they reach the entrance. Given the outcry provoked by the supposedly "mall-like" character of the earlier renewal plan's entrance area, it's hard to understand how so prominent a placement could have been accorded to the retail pavilion in the later plan. The Freed plan was also excoriated for the "grotesque," pseudo-Biblical character of its entrance pavilion, which apparently featured gilded cupolas and was dubbed "the Altar." Are the current entrance structures, which aimed for "modesty," preferable? I guess one person's utility closet is another's "modesty." Or is it?

• The same old sun-baked surface parking lot is there -- hardly a beloved feature of the Museum in its pre-renewal state. Museum Director James Snyder found that it would be "not pleasant" to enter the Museum from an underground garage. I suppose he finds the above-ground parking lot pleasant.

• The Museum proper is still linked to the entrance area by passageways that more compact and human-friendly design would have rendered unnecessary. Mansfeld's original tiered open-air path -- the Carter Promenade --  is as shadeless and unforgiving of human physical frailty as I remember it, while the below-grade "Route of Passage" is an over-long, under-activated, sterile space whose most engaging feature is the little green golf-cart that plies its way to and fro, awaiting people with certifiable mobility challenges to transport from one end of the passage to the next. Car dependency, anyone? There's not much on display in the passage, though it's hard to imagine this being due to a paucity of displayable items. I guess the stark greyness of the tunnel is meant to render the headache induced by Olafur Eliasson's psychadelic "rainbow" at the end of it all the more intense.

• Weirder still is the claustrophobia-inducing corridor that runs parallel to the Route of Passage -- essentially, a partitioning of the available space. Much high-flown language has been devoted to James Carpenter's "reinterpretation" of "the sensuality of narrow alleys and sunken oases by creating a defined arrangement of spatial experiences animated by phenomenal light." Apparently this rather traumatizing little alleyway was created so that the Route of Passage could be "fed natural light through prismatic glass and waterfalls."
  
  If this space is an example of good design, I can hardly imagine what might be considered to be bad design. Since when do architects go out of their way to create spaces that are unutilizable by humans and/or frightening to them? 

• Campus grounds that are exceptionally -- almost spitefully -- inhospitable . Here we reach the crux of the matter:

Grounds for outrage: 

I don't expect instant perfection or magic bullets. I'm willing to accept that the Israel Museum will remain an isolated, car-oriented compound for some time to come. What really bothers me -- what prompted this critical post -- is the failure of the Museum's $100 million renewal project to turn the actual grounds of the Museum "campus" into a site that would serve its users -- local residents, foreign tourists, regular and infrequent visitors, individuals and families -- in a humane and dignified way. If the surrounding area has little potential for mixed-use urbanism in the foreseeable future, the Museum campus itself could have been made to provide a greater mix of uses to its visitors.

By "mix of uses" I don't mean that a full-fledged shopping center ought to have been erected at the site or, for that matter, a housing complex. On the other hand, a small convenience store where tourists who, say, run out of diapers for their babies might pick up an overpriced package of Huggies, wouldn’t be a bad idea. The unthinkability of adding such a minor amenity – one that would acknowledge the facility's geographic isolation and the human needs of its visitors – to the venerable Israel Museum campus, is itself a big problem. But what really bothers me is that the renovation did not try in any way to make a virtue of necessity -- to leverage the “campus” concept itself in the form of attractive, welcoming grounds where Museum visitors might relax, picnic, take breaks during their tour of the Museum, and generally enjoy a more leisurely experience of the place -- given the effort they have to make to get there and the lack of any other resources in the surrounding area.

The renovation's deficiency in this regard  is most clearly exemplified by a near-total absence of shade -- whether in the form of trees or of man-made canopies -- on the campus' extensive grounds. The very word "campus" conjures up leafy images, but the term that might best describe the Israel Museum campus on a summer's day is "sun-scorched:"

Shadeless path at the Israel Museum -- note the
"ornamental" stunted-bonzai olive trees that line the path

Well-hydrated "shrine"

Seating without shade

There is no excuse for this. The campus' various water features -- the dreary little pool at the entrance with the abstract sculpture inside it, looking like some kind of deconstructed Facebook symbol; the gurgling man-made stream that runs along the tiered open-air passageway between the Museum proper and the entrance area; the jets that continuously spray the Shrine of the Book and the "moat" surrounding the Shrine -- all of these things seem to mock the human visitor with their hints at coolness and refreshment. Perhaps the architectural statement made by the white dome of the Shrine and the contrasting black wall -- the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness imagery -- is thought to be enhanced by the glare; to this visitor, at least, the uncomfortable conditions in which one is meant to view the architecture are simply insulting. Children in particular are fascinated by the water jets and will stand gazing at them under the harsh sun for long periods until dragged away kicking and screaming.

Why can't one view the truly impressive and fascinating scale model of Second-Temple era Jerusalem in comfort? Must the model be displayed in the open air? Surely some kind of transparent dome could be erected that would cover it in natural-light conditions? Even if the open-air display has some justification, I can't understand why those who come to see it must be exposed to the elements. There are a couple of small canopies, but they are at an awkward distance from the model (which is itself gated off with a kind of buffer area). In actuality, everyone comes right up to the barrier despite the lack of shade, because they want to see the details:

Then there's the Museum's famed Billy Rose Art Garden. Like "campus," the word "garden" tends to elicit an expectation of greenery. But what is this "garden" but a series of sun-baked gravel expanses, like an almost-empty parking lot. Apparently there was a lot of space to fill up on the sprawling "campus" and not a lot of money for landscaping, so they made a kind of sensory desert punctuated by the occasional nature band-aid that -- as usual -- offers no shade:

Basically, if there happens to be a shady spot you can't sit there because there's no bench and they've made sure to put some ground cover around the tree that would be uncomfortable for a person to rest upon:

Whereas if there happens to be a bench, you can be sure there is no shade:

Of course, one would hope that an "art" garden would have some actual art in it.

Why, in short, could I not find, on my recent visit, a comfortable spot where my little daughter and I could eat the sandwiches we'd brought with us? It's hard not to feel offended by the sight of a museum restaurant's shaded outdoor dining area while one is engaged in a fruitless search for shelter. I personally witnessed a guard shooing away a visitor who, attempting to drink his mineral water in relative comfort, took refuge from the sun in a crevice of this apple core sculpture near one of the Museum's canopied eateries ...

Not everyone can find what they need in a museum cafeteria; not everyone's kids will sit still at a restaurant table; it can be a great hardship to have to stand on a long line with young children in a cafeteria; people have health issues, money issues, kashrut issues, etc. -- you can't expect every museum visitor to patronize a museum restaurant. A compound as isolated and self-contained as the Israel Museum can and ought to provide shade and comfortable seating -- at no extra cost! -- to those who make the effort to get there.

I can understand wanting visitors to patronize the Museum restaurants and souvenir shops; I can't understand the use of mall psychology to force them to do so. The feeling one gets is that the Museum management wants to herd you through the collections, the restaurants and the stores without letting you linger on the grounds -- just as in a shopping mall where there is nowhere to sit except in the food court! 

Perhaps the sprawl mentality of the Museum's original planners has evolved into mall mentality, where every space must be exploited to serve a commercial purpose. That would seem to be a logical progression. Is it unfair to slap a "suburban sprawl developer" label on Alfred Mansfeld? The claim is that he was inspired by the traditional Arab village -- that his white Modernist cubes were meant to hug the hill like village dwellings and to offer inspiring views of the surrounding landscape. It all sounds very high-minded  -- a cultural institution planned, in Zandberg's words, "on the principle of organic growth in the spirit of structuralist and cybernetic linguistic theories, which penetrated the architecture of the 1950s and 1960s. It is considered internationally a unique architectural experiment." But all I see is sprawl -- what many think of today as a failed experiment. A cultural institution that in its original state required visitors -- including disabled and elderly visitors -- to "climb a steep path under a strong summer sun or during chilly winter weather to get to the exhibition halls," and whose modular structures evolved into an unnavigable maze: did we really need it? Should we still be venerating it? Was all the effort and money spent on retaining the original idea worth it?

Brander Park and Gardens, City Center -- a Jerusalem Playground Review

I recently had the pleasure of visiting a renovated playground in the city center -- the "revitalized downtown Jerusalem" that I sometimes mock in a spirit of contrarianism. This wonderful new playground definitely creates an incentive (which I previously found lacking) to go downtown with the kids ...

Name: Brander Park and Gardens

There is a plaque identifying the park's donors as  Dr. Jerome and Mrs. Frances Brander of Atlantic City. On maps, however, the area seems to be called Meir Sherman Garden. When the conundrum has been resolved, Gd willing, I will update.

Location: King George Street, downtown Jerusalem (adjacent to Independence Park).

Transit: Egged lines 4, 4A, 7, 7A, 8, 8A, 9, 9A, 17, 17A, 19, 19A, 21, 21A, 31, 031, 32, 032, 38, 74, 75.

Shade: There's plenty of shade in this park, making it quite usable at all hours of the day, even when the sun is at its harshest. In addition to the many trees scattered throughout, some of them quite old and venerable ...

... there is the welcome addition of a large artificial shade structure covering a selection of attractive, new-style "dynamic" play equipment.

Obviously these shade structures cost money and one can't expect that every corner of a playground will be encompassed by them. Still, it's kind of a shame that this line of cool and varied swings is so entirely exposed to the sun -- I doubt one can use them comfortably after about 9:00 a.m.:

All in all, though, this is a well-shaded playground/park, where at least half of the play equipment is sufficiently shaded for mid-day use, and where comfortable picnic spots can always be found:

Play equipment and features:

Play equipment seems to have its own fashion trends, which wax and wane. A few years ago every new playground in these parts featured a climbing/slide structure with tunnels and turrets, a kind of all-in-one facility around which the entire play area revolved -- like the department store on which a mall is "anchored."

Over the last couple of years, however, things seem to have evolved. My first inkling of the changing times came on a family trip to Zichron Yaacov two summers ago, where we were enchanted by what seemed to us a wonderfully original playground full of strange kinetic-dynamic-futuristic play structures of a kind we had never seen before.

Now these structures are popping up here in Jerusalem as well. The novelty hasn't worn off yet -- maybe it never will:

As noted above, an entire section of the playground is devoted to the swing concept in a variety of ultramodern incarnations. The swings are attractive and fun -- for older children; none is suited to a toddler, unless she's in someone's lap ...

There's a separate toddler play area with some nice features, including this sleek bouncy snake:

The train structure is very attractive, but was in full sun and hot to the touch at around 10:30-11:00 a.m. when we were there:

Other notable features and amenities:

-- Bicycle racks

-- There's a regular water fountain near the toddler play area, and a more "advanced" one off the older-child area -- the water is chilled, and the fountain has a bottle-filling installation:

-- Rarity of all rarities in Jerusalem playgrounds: a restroom. My son tried to get in but couldn't figure out how. I have no idea whether it works, is cleaned/maintained, etc. Nor do I want to be the one who checks this out. Perhaps an intrepid reader will care to update me on this, for the benefit of the wider public ...

-- Brander Park leads directly into the larger, open green space of Jerusalem's well-known Independence Park, an area suitable for picnics, ball-related activities, gatherings, etc. Independence Park has no play facilities per se and I never thought of it as a full-service attraction in and of itself for kids, but nowadays it makes a nice, relaxing side-trip when everyone has tired themselves out on Brander Park's exciting play equipment. Of particular interest is the man-made water feature -- small pools and streams, mainly in shade, that attract kids like flies and offer adults a cool and refreshing interlude amid the downtown bustle:

 

But don't bring your bathing suit, or drink the water. It might embalm you:

Age range: Toddler through adult:

Snack factor: Many restaurants, cafes, bakeries and convenience stores a short walk away on Jaffa Rd. and along the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall; a kiosk selling ice creams/ices, snacks and cold drinks (as well as less child-oriented items such as lottery tickets and cigarettes) is located at the park's Meir Shaham St. entrance.

Schmooze factor: This is not the kind of playground you go to in order to meet up with a regular crowd of neighborhood moms and childminders -- a valuable feature of certain other playgrounds that I have reviewed.. Brander Park is downtown, so it gets a more transient and varied clientele, and that is its strong point and brand differentiation. One sees locals of all stripes, tourists, plenty of dog-walkers, etc.

Seating: Seating has been handled thoughtfully and generously throughout the park, whether in the form of wooden benches (a fair number in shady spots), a circular stone bench surrounding the main play area, or stone tree and shrubbery platforms that do double duty as seating:

Multiple uses within the park: Brander Park certainly has much to offer within its borders, especially if those borders are extended to include Independence Park. It has several play areas (suited to different age groups) that are distinct and intimate yet flow gracefully into each other; lawns for kicking a ball around, picnicking, etc.; steps and platforms that beckon young children to climb on them; the babbling brook of Independence Park; areas of noisy togetherness and spots of repose. You won't be bored here.

Beyond the park: Self-evident, considering the downtown location. In the immediate vicinity, on King George Street, are certain tourist-itenerary items such as Yeshurun Central Synagogue, the Great Synagogue and Heichal Shlomo.

Prior to the renovation, I never considered this playground to be anything that I would travel out of my south Jerusalem comfort zone for. In general, I always regarded downtown as rather child-unfriendly and resented the lack of a worthwhile play area there. I never could bring myself to run errands in the city center with kids in tow. I've hardly been downtown at all these last few years, as most of my needs can be met closer to home (i.e., in Talpiot); in fact my unexpected recent forays there were occasioned by nothing less than the necessity of getting my three year old vaccinated against rabies at the Health Ministry facility at 86 Jaffa Rd. I dreaded the trip downtown with her, thinking that Brander Park, as I remembered it (a rickety old merry-go-round?), would not compensate her adequately for the innoculation experience. In the end I was pleasantly surprised on all counts: the rabies prevention unit is run efficiently and located in a beautiful old building that is worth visiting on its own merits; the little one was enthralled by the shop windows of Jaffa Rd. and the passing trains; and I discovered the Brander Park renovation.

I'm not naive. I know the Jerusalem Municipality didn't have lowly residents like me in mind when it decided to renovate this playground, but rather the tourist population. Yet this is one instance where the locals truly enjoy a collateral benefit. "Mixed-use" has become a catchword of the downtown Jerusalem revitalization scene, but it appears to refer mainly to a mix of commercial, office and hotel/residential space in new high-rises slated for construction. Yet by creating a truly fun place for children in the city center, the planning echelon has done much to enhance downtown Jerusalem's mixed-use status -- without having to reach skyward.

A Memorial to Bad Urbanism on Derech Beit Lechem

Derech Beit Lechem, or Bethlehem Road, is a long street that runs through Jerusalem's Baka and Talpiot neighborhoods, parallel to the thunderous traffic artery of Derech Hevron. Derech Beit Lechem, though itself a busy thoroughfare in parts, would not normally be called "thunderous" (a car word) but rather "bustling" (a people word). When one talks about Derech Beit Lechem one tends to draw on a lexicon of chicness and boutiques, cafes and gentrification.

This vocabulary mainly describes the section of Derech Beit Lechem that extends between Rivka Street (near "Tsomet HaBankim") and Yiftah Street. There is considerable urbanist consciousness in that part of town; Baka activists have garnered media attention by protesting planned changes in traffic patterns that would, in the words of architect and Baka resident David Guggenheim, "have destroyed the delicate urban fabric" of Derech Beit Lechem.

There is, however, another Derech Beit Lechem -- one whose urban fabric is not so delicate: the Talpiot Industrial Area end of the street, between HaTenufa and Derech Baram. On this stretch of Derech Beit Lechem, one side of the street features old industrial buildings ...

... flanking a forlorn, vacant lot where the infamous Versailles wedding hall disaster occurred eleven years ago yesterday, on May 24, 2001. No one, apparently, wants to build something new here:

Site where the Versailles wedding hall once stood, now offering a direct view of the ubiquitous Holyland project.



The opposite side of the street, on this stretch of Derech Beit Lechem, houses some of Jerusalem's poorer residents, in a compound of decrepit shikun buildings (1950s-era mass housing for immigrants) currently slated for urban renewal:



And it is on this side of the street, directly across from the now-desolate space where the Versailles disaster occurred, that a "memorial garden" has been created in honor of the disaster's victims:

Is it just me, or does this "garden" seem wholly inappropriate, whether as a memorial to the casualties of a collapsed dance floor, or as a feature of a street where, after all, human beings continue to live and go about their business? Well, I guess if I thought it was just me, I wouldn't be writing this post, would I?

Here's what I think is wrong with the Versailles memorial site:

1) It has a distinctly military-cemetery feel, as though the designer (architect David Guggenheim -- the Baka activist mentioned above) thought the site was meant to commemorate a battle where heroic warriors fell, rather than a civil disaster. Those tall, straight-arrow cypress trees standing at attention under the brutal midday Mediterranean sun, surrounded by a stark grey concrete wall bearing the names of the fallen ... This military ambience is all wrong, given the civil nature of the incident.

2) The site is unsuited to an area where, as I noted above, people live, play, work, and pursue everyday activities. Basically, a large chunk of public space was hijacked and turned into something that no one can use. This isn't a cemetery, it's a street. Would David Guggenheim want something like this on his end of Derech Beit Lechem?

To be more specific about why the memorial is unsuited to an area where people live and "do stuff" (as opposed to a military cemetery or some kind of national battlefield park):

-- The "garden" is shadeless, meaning that no one can spend time there during normal daytime hours. Wouldn't it have been more meaningful, a more fitting remembrance of the departed, to have planted some shade trees, and arranged them in an inviting way, with some benches under them, creating what we refer to in Hebrew as a pinat hemed -- a "cosy corner" that would have elicited gratitude from local residents and passersby, and, perhaps, have stimulated actual contemplation of the names of the disaster victims -- rather than concealing them?

-- The overall layout is such that one can't be in the site; one is forced to
walk around it. As I said: a hijacking of public space. One can speculate that Guggenheim intended something deep by this: perhaps the set-up of trees-mounted-on-a-platform, upon which we gaze as outside observers, was meant to evoke the moment just before the dance floor collapsed beneath the wedding revellers -- a moment that was captured for posterity on video, and viewed by many thousands of people.

Whatever visual metaphor Guggenheim had in mind, it does not, in my view, justify the removal of a public space from public use. The local residents didn't cause the disaster. Why should they not have the use of their street in its entirety, and in aesthetically pleasing form?

And if the site of the catastrophe itself -- directly across the street from where the memorial "garden" was installed -- has lain desolate for the past decade, wouldn't that have been the logical venue for a monument of some kind?

-- Also, what's with the grey, blank wall on the outside of the memorial? 

Not that it was necessary or desirable to have this grey starkness on the interior walls, either -- but how can one justify putting a blank wall directly across from what is, essentially, a nice, modest, pleasantly dense and human-scaled stretch of multifamily dwellings:

The Versailles disaster, in which 23 people perished and 350 or more were injured due to "quick and dirty" construction methods and owner negligence, demonstrated one kind of price that society pays when the needs of actual human beings are treated with cavalier disregard by those responsible for our built environment.

The Versailles disaster "memorial garden" demonstrates another cost that we incur, as a society, when those responsible for our built environment disregard the needs of actual human beings. No, no deaths are likely to be directly caused by an ugly and unusable memorial garden. But I would argue that negative urban features such as these have a cumulative effect. They make it seem okay to do inappropriate things with the street; to design and build inappropriately. They alienate us from the street, with devastating effects on our quality of life and long-term health. Twenty-three fatalities in one shot is indeed a terrible tragedy. But when, as a society, we adhere to a lifestyle in which the street is a place to be avoided, we suffer health consequences that, though more insidious, reach much farther.

Gan HaAgvaniya (Tomato Park), Old Katamon -- a Jerusalem Playground Review

Name: This much-loved park has an irresistible name. Who wouldn't want to go to a park named after a tomato?  Although the place had been known to me for many years, I learned its name only when my oldest son started attending Chorev Elementary School, which stands across the street from the park and supplies a large proportion of its clientele. Apparently the name refers to the park's shape, which is thought to be tomato-like, with a slightly indented shrubbery area at its "crown":

On maps of Old Katamon that I have looked at, the tomato comparison seems a bit far-fetched.

Actually the park has another, official name, inscribed on two separate plaques:

John V. Lindsay, Mayor of New York City from 1966-1973 -- a.k.a. Mayor Linseed of Gotham City ...

I did a little digging online about Harvey Rothenberg, the park donor identified on the plaque in the above photo. A successful New York City businessman and active Zionist who helped found the Jerusalem Fund, he was also a good friend of John V. Lindsay and served on Lindsay's mayoral staff for a salary of $1 per year -- somewhat reminiscent of our current shekel-a-year Jerusalem mayor. Rothenberg reminisces about his interactions with such luminaries as Golda Meir, the Shah of Iran, and Teddy Kollek, here. For a fascinating article about John V. Lindsay and his conception of New York City as an "adventure playground," click here.

It may seem unfair that a "popular" playground name should trump the name intended for it by its donor; there may be something instructive in this, something to do with the primacy of physical features in the minds of children. I don't feel capable of bucking the trend and talking about "John V. Lindsay Park" in everyday conversation, but I do think it's worthwhile to trace the donor history of parks and to honor the philanthropists who help make Jerusalem a better place. So, I hope, where relevant, to keep including donor information as a feature of my Jerusalem Playground Reviews.

Location: Kovshei Katamon Street, at the Kaf-Tet BeNovember Street intersection (across from Chorev Elementary School), Old Katamon.

Transit/Parking: Bus line 24 (Kovshei Katamon St.); plentiful on-street parking on Kovshei Katamon during most daytime hours, except for school drop-off and pick-up times.

Shade: Gan HaAgvaniya has abundant shade. I can't vouch for the central play area during all daytime hours, but a large sandbox near the park entrance (which includes a couple of spring toys and tic-tac-toe installation) is shady throughout the day:

The park's large open area is bounded by a margin of shrubbery and lovely mature trees:

Benches are scattered along the park perimeter to take advantage of the shade.

Playground equipment and features:

Large climbing/slide structure, suitable for toddlers and young children, up to about ages 6-8:

Merry-go-round

Running barrel

Small see-saw

Spring toys

"Standing" see-saw

Large, relatively clean and shady sand box with tic-tac-toe installation and spring toys:

Cat statue (good for climbing, throwing sand at):

(Plenty of real felines, too ...)

Shrubbery areas that are accessible to children for mucking around and exploring:

Lots of climbable rocks and stepping-stones:

A circular path, part asphalt and part cobblestone, suitable for scootering, tricycling, etc.:

Age range:  Play equipment suitable for toddlers and younger children up to ages 6-8; for older children the park offers sufficient space to kick a ball around, dig for scorpions (if they're into that sort of thing), ride a scooter, or just hang out.

Snack factor: Unfortunately, there is no kiosk or grocery in the immediate vicinity (i.e., accessible without having to cross a street, or at least visible just across a street). However, there is a grocery around the corner on HaLamed-Heh Street, a fairly short walk away, as well as a bakery/cafe. A few blocks away, on HaPalmach St., there is a larger selection of stores and eateries (see the Beyond the park section below).

Schmooze factor: I use this park mainly in the afternoons, when I pick my kids up from the school across the street. The after-school hours are quite busy and fun here, with older Chorev kids stopping to play or cutting through the park on their way home ...

(somebody brought their hamster to school today)

 .. mothers picking up their younger schoolchildren and bringing preschool siblings and babies along for an outing ...

... or perhaps a picnic:

On school days you sometimes see classes of 30+ children from Chorev Elementary School charging into the park -- time off for good behavior ... On Friday mornings (a school morning, but also the start of the Israeli Friday-Shabbat weekend) the park is a popular spot for fathers with toddlers, giving their wives a break. On regular weekday mornings (Sunday through Thursday) the park usually gets some traffic -- the occasional mother-child or babysitter-child dyad, dog walkers, etc. However, Gan HaAgvaniya doesn't seem to especially attract metaplot (family-based childcare providers) with larger numbers of children in tow, perhaps because there is another, bigger park a couple of blocks down that also has swings, or possibly due to a problem with seating in the park's main play area, which I discuss below.

Seating: My one criticism of the park. Yes, there are plenty of benches along the tree-lined perimeter, and they provide delightfully shady seating on a hot summer's day. There is also a bench near the sandbox, and a funky seating area at the park's entrance:



In memory of Eliezer Karsani



The problem is that there are no benches near the park's central play area, where most of the equipment is located. 

The play area was renovated a couple of years ago. Formerly, it consisted of a small but sturdy and attractive wooden climbing/slide structure, a metal "car" installation with benches and steering wheels, and a spring toy or two. The equipment was situated within a sandbox, which itself was surrounded by a circular stone bench where mothers and other adults could sit and keep a close eye on the children playing there. When the play area was renovated (and I never could figure out why, as the previous set of equipment was perfectly adequate), the stone bench was removed and replaced with ... nothing that anyone, adult or child, could comfortably sit on.

Instead, the renovated play area was partly demarcated by a "decorative" but useless stone wall that is too high for a normal-sized adult woman to sit on in a dignified way:

You have to jump pretty high to get up on this thing, and then your legs dangle ...

If you look carefully, you can see that the wall is actually slanted in the wrong direction for anyone who might actually want to sit on it while facing the play area ... There are some benches not too far away, but the wall serves as a barrier between them and the play area, meaning that a mother/caregiver who wants to keep a close eye on children using the play equipment (and step in quickly to intervene where necessary) would not feel comfortable using the benches.

There is a problem in Jerusalem these days with excessive wall-building. I don't mean in a political sense (that's far beyond my purview), but in an urbanist sense. I point this out regarding another, brand-new playground that is effectively ruined by its surrounding wall, and regarding the city's newer residential construction. Just because it's made of Jerusalem stone doesn't mean it belongs there! There's more to urban design than putting up walls! 

Multiple uses within the park: Gan HaAgvaniya is definitely a mixed-use kind of place. It boasts:

Several different play areas that are distinct yet visible and easily accessible to each other (a plus for caregivers watching several children of varying ages);

Well-developed, multiple shrubbery areas where kids can interact with the natural world;

A circular path for scootering, etc.;

Some open lawn space:

Rocks and stones for climbing;



There is an adjacent empty lot (in Old Katamon! -- surely constituting some of the most valuable real estate on the planet) where more adventurous children can explore:

The park's immediate proximity to a school and a bus stop, and its relative proximity to some shopping areas, make it a pass-through place. Although it is bounded along much of the "tomato" perimeter by residential buildings, with a buffer of shrubbery and mature trees, this boundary is actually quite permeable. All the locals seem to know where the park border's unofficial "transit points" are, and utilize them as shortcuts.

Gan HaAgvaniya fits my mantra: a good park should be different things to different people, and different things to the same people on different occasions.

Beyond the park: Kovshei Katamon and HaLamed-Heh streets

Although I have reviewed three other playgrounds so far in the enchanted Old Katamon-German-Colony-Baka triangle, it is Gan HaAgvaniya and its surrounding streets that conjure up memories of my bitza past with a Proustian palpability. This is subjective, I know. I'm sure other Katamon refugees have their own involuntary-memory triggers.

As you leave Gan HaAgvaniya and head up Kovshei Katamon in the direction of HaLamed-Heh, you see some pretty typical Katamon architecture:

The above building is not an especially fancy one, just a normal stone-faced residential structure that exemplifies what life was like in Jerusalem before the current nightmare of minimum parking requirements. Note that there is indeed some parking space at ground level, under the building proper and directly in front of it. Note also, however, that the area in front of the building is left open, meaning that the structure's overall human scale remains intact. Yes, there's a car parked there, but there's also a bit of shrubbery; you can see the balconies and windows of the lower floors; if you pass by at night you have a reassuring sense of human activity in the area. This is in contrast to the snout houses that have become all the rage in Jerusalem over the last two decades -- buildings with large, enclosed garages that protrude from the building facades and create a sense of desolation at street level. A few of these devils appear a little farther up, when we turn the corner onto HaLamed-Heh Street. I will point them out to you, don't worry.

Another undistinguished, but human-scaled and therefore attractive apartment building:

The Kovshei-Katamon--HaLamed-Heh intersection:

The corner building is Yakar, the well-known synagogue and epicenter of my bitza memories. To point up the connection with Gan HaAgvaniya, I used to duck out from Yakar to the park on Yom Kippur for a catnap between mussaf and mincha -- the ten minutes or so that were left after the endlessly drawn-out (but beautifully harmonized!) davening. Now, I do like trees and shrubbery but I think they've gone a bit overboard. I'd like to see more building here.

Turning left onto HaLamed-Heh, one finds an interesting mixed-use street marked by attractive older architecture and, unfortunately, some terrible recent construction.

One lovely old building serves as a residence ...

... while its next-door neighbor houses a bank:

Kos Shel Bracha wine shop (I'll try to get another picture of the place sometime when it's open).

Below: the only store selling religious Jewish books on this side of town. Since they have a local monopoly, why do the proprietors of Havruta feel it's necessary to advertise themselves all over Jerusalem on those ugly municipal ad installations?

But it is a great store (though not very stroller-accessible), with a good children's section (including English books) and attractive Judaica:

Ah, here we come to it. The original Jerusalem snout houses, circa mid-1990s -- the start of a plague. The cavernous garage entrances, like giant yawns in the middle of an otherwise pleasant and human-scaled street:

The interesting and rather hopeful thing that characterizes this snout-house setup on HaLamed-Heh St. is that the garages alternate with commercial spaces: a minimarket and a branch of the Lechem Shel Tomer bakery/restaurant chain:

On the menu: "orange" soup, kumquat confiture (marmalade?), "outstanding" hamantaschen ...

Whether the minimarket and bakery/cafe occupy spaces that were originally planned for commercial use, or converted from garage spaces, I don't know. The minimarket guy hadn't been there long enough to tell me ... But the sight of this garage/commercial mix does give one hope that many of Jerusalem's snouthouses will someday be retrofitted for shops and restaurants, offices, small groundfloor apartments ... thereby creating viable streetscapes, rather than depressing garage-scapes.

Farther down the street there's another cafe and a greengrocer ... but the little one was getting impatient in her stroller. Also, she was filthy, having removed her shoes and socks (this in mid-February) for a more "feet-on" sandbox experience at Gan HaAgvaniya:

Bath time!