Beit Ha ir The Urban Culture Museum of Tel Aviv

On the site of what eventually became Independence Hall, 66 families gathered on 20 Nissan, April 11, 1909 to participate in a lottery for plots of land for Ahuzat Bayit, a new Jewish neighborhood outside Jaffa. Meir Dizengoff and his wife Zina won lot #43 and built their home there. He served as head of the new neighborhood committee, and later became the first mayor of Tel Aviv. In 1910, at a general meeting of the Ahuzat Bayit residents, the name of the neighborhood was changed by majority vote to Tel Aviv, inspired by Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl’s book Altneuland , the title given by Nahum Sokolow to his Hebrew translation – Tel Aviv means “Hill of Spring.” Following the death of his wife in 1930, Meir Dizengoff donated his house to his beloved city and requested that it be turned into a museum. The building was expanded and renovated and in 1936 became the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. In May 1948, the declaration of the creation of the State of Israel took place in the museum’s hall. The renovated Independence Hall opened to the public in 1978.