Biography / Administrative History
Eliasaf Robinson, a native of the city of Tel Aviv, began to gather the materials relating to Tel Aviv in the 1960s, when he was still a teenager. He belongs to the fourth generation in a family dynasty of booksellers and is the most prominent antiquarian book dealer in Israel. The Jewish settlement that became the city of Tel Aviv was established in 1909. Almost everything in this collection dates from before 1948, the year that the State of Israel proclaimed its independence. The collection documents a vast range of private and public activity in Tel Aviv during its first four decades. Above all, the materials in the collection demonstrate the effectiveness of one of the twentieth century?s boldest and most effective acts of social engineering: the revival and enforced use of the Hebrew language. The modern, largely secular, urban Hebrew culture that emerged there during the 1920s and 1930s is the basis of the Israeli culture of today. The photographs, postcards, maps, architectural plans, and construction permits in this collection also document the growth of the "White City" of Tel Aviv, which in March 2003 UNESCO proclaimed a World Heritage Centre. This recognition was based on the city's "synthesis of outstanding significance of the various trends of the Modern Movement in architecture and town planning in the early part of the 20th century."
From the guide to the Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv collection, circa 1909-1960, (Stanford University. Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.)
