Of all the things I expected to do in Tel Aviv, touring the central bus station was surely at the bottom of the list…actually, it was nowhere near the list. But in my research on Brutalist architecture, it popped up as a building everyone loves to hate, and I also saw the following advertisement:
Come with us as we go into the belly of the New Central Bus Station of Tel Aviv. Two and half hours of mysterious oddities, located in one of the most notorious buildings in Israel. Join us to find out why it’s one of the craziest places in the country. Architecture, breakdancing, Yiddish and Tagalog. What’s with all the graffiti on the 7th floor? and WHAT?! There’s a bat cave?!!! Curious? Meeting point: Levinsky 118, Tel Aviv, gate #42-43.
Curious? You bet. And when it turned out that my friend Steve knew a tour guide who did this tour…well, my fate was sealed.
In the “What Were They Thinking Category!!!”, surely this structure must take pride of place. Designed in the sixties, covering 5 city blocks and containing 2.5 million square feet of space over six floors, it had a novel, and dubious premise.
Two competing bus lines were to share the space, but as arch-rivals, the only way they would agree to do so was if they each got their own depot. So the Dan buses were assigned to the lowest of six levels (which was 3 below street level), while the Egged buses were to come and go on the sixth level, then the top floor. Dan did not want to be somewhere called lower level “-3”, so the lowest level was called “1”, which is why, when you now enter off the street, you are on level #4.
To transfer from one set of buses to the other, (or just to get in and out of the place), required passengers to navigate from three to six levels on foot, through winding circular hallways. These were meant to evoke streets running off a main boulevard, and just like in Tel Aviv proper, those streets curved all over the place! Travellers would pass as they went, 4 floors of stores, (2300 of them at full capacity) SIX movie theatres, a food market, restaurants, sitting areas, and so on.
The labyrinth-like design ensured that this would take as long as long as possible with maximum opportunity to lose one’s way….oh… and to shop. This was intentional…and to this day, even the employees in the place can, and do, lose their way. Those of you who have been to the Dizengoff centre have only to imagine that particular mall “on steroids” to get the idea of the baffling layout that was employed.
The idea was that you would have plenty of things to do while waiting for your bus, like say: take in a film, have dinner, and do a little shopping. The mall owners wanted a captive audience, and the layout ensured they would have one!
This is what happens when you put a mall developer, a high profile Brutalist architect and an ambitious city administration together and shake well. Had any of them ever actually taken a bus?
Of course it never quite worked out as “planned” (if you can use such a word for the whole debacle). For one thing, shortly after construction started the country was at war and ran out of concrete. Once back on track, multiple redesigns delayed construction. Several bankruptcies, and almost 30 years later, the “New” terminal finally opened for use in 1993.
To give Tel Avivis credit, they knew pretty early on that this was a disaster in the making, and it was soon nicknamed the “white elephant”. At the official opening ceremony, a giant helium balloon in the shape of …yes… a white elephant… was released. This is the kind of thing I love about this place.
Within three years, the lower Dan bus level was abandoned because the exhaust from the buses made the floors around it unfit for human use. ( I am no expert, but it strikes me that this is the sort of thing that might have been considered before putting buses in the basement.) Anyway, some of the buses were moved to the 6th floor, and the rest to yet another NEW floor #7! (Why not double down!). Today the bottom level is used only on Sundays for soldiers returning to base. What a way to start the week!
All the stores that were on the levels 1-3, below grade, were abandoned due to lack of traffic, and air pollution…as were the movie theatres which were conveniently located next to the basement bus ramps. More lawsuits ensued, as all those store owners lost their investments. Today, only about 40% of the structure is occupied.
So what is left? Well, lots of abandoned stores, some 1300 of them. Many long, scary, dark, empty corridors.
But in a tribute to the human spirit, and the enterprising nature of the hardscrabble neighbourhood surrounding the station, you can also find about 1,000 little businesses, most of them crowded into a bazaar like atmosphere at ground level (#4,) and up to the second floor (#5.) The overall effect is one of mass confusion.
And there are countless shoe stores, hallways and hallways of them, clustered together into a kind of crazy “shoe neighbourhood”…hmmm…maybe this place does have some redeeming features.
“Little Manila”, which might have been the busiest part of the place; grocery stores, restaurants, and money-wiring services for the Philipina community which is as integral to elder care here as anywhere else.
What else? Let’s see. A dance studio, a church, a synagogue, endless space for skateboard fanatics and breakdancers, and Israel’s biggest, (of course), and most notorious nightclub, The Block. Also a few artist’s studios. Like this one.
This fellow is a ceramic artist and sells his goods in the Nahalat Binyamin market. He also has the keys to to the Yiddish Museum which is across the way, and which he opened up to show us around. Yes, of all things, there is a Yiddish Museum, in what looks like a tiny storefront, but which is much bigger when you get inside. It houses thousands of old books, old newspapers, other memorabilia, and a stage for klezmer concerts. And as we all know, where there is music… there must be a bar…and indeed there was one, which our ceramic artist put to immediate use. The whole museum is a labour of love staffed entirely by volunteers.
On the lowest level, there is also a bomb shelter that can hold 16,000 people. It has actually been used once.
And right by the bomb shelter, possibly the most peculiar feature of the whole crazy structure, a giant bat colony. Yes, nature abhors a vacuum, and when the buses left, the bats moved in. Thousands and thousands of them. So naturally, a decision was made to protect them, by walling off their own 200 metre long concrete bat cave. Then it was declared a nature preserve, under the supervision of Israel’s Nature and Garden Department (!)…(I have no words). You cannot actually see into it, but you can hear the little critters when standing by the wall. They are there…trust me.
And what about the buses, the “raison d’etre” of the whole place? Well they got a brand new floor on the top of the structure (# 7 !), which is actually quite nice, especially compared to the rest of the building. It has a great view of Tel Aviv.
The 7th floor also has a vast and exuberant collection of street art. The city invited some of the better known street artists to decorate the walls to celebrate the new floor, and this was such a success that it has been left there permanently. It was certainly worth seeing and I would go back for that alone. It casts Florentine into the shade. A couple of examples:
There is little certainty about the future of this bizarre structure. It is much too big for its purpose, and it squats right in the middle of a run-down neighbourhood that is in dire need of revival and refurbishment. All that empty dark space attracts all kinds of illicit activity, which drags the area down even further. City planners are desperate to get rid of it, but it is privately owned and nothing is simple in Israel, even in the rare case when all parties agree. Demolishing it would cause all kinds of pollution…and most importantly…let us not forget the bats. This is their home.
