Frumin House

Froumine or Frumin House (Hebrew: בית פרומין‎‎; Beit Frumin; also known as the Old Knesset) was the temporary abode of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, from 1950 to 1966. The building is located at 24 King George Street in downtown Jerusalem. The first to the fifth Knesset sessions were conducted there.

The three-story building is named after the Froumine family, who initiated its construction for residential and business purposes in 1947. The Froumine family manufactured baked goods and the building was a residence with shops on the ground floor. based on plans by architect Reuven Abram (1892-1978). It was originally intended to be a six story structure however only three levels had been completed when construction was suspended during the Israeli War of Independence.

In his book on construction in Jerusalem during the British Mandate, architectural historian David Kroyanker wrote that at the end of 1948, the government chose the building (then only a skeleton) as the home of the Knesset because of its large ground-floor hall. The hall, which had an upper balcony, was originally meant to be a bank. In a Haaretz article in 2003, journalist Esther Zandberg speculated: "The first building's city-center site, and the location of the plenum hall at street level were, without a doubt, an urban expression of a point of view that saw democracy and the Knesset as part of everyday civil existence, in contrast with its isolation in the present-day fortified compound". Kroyanker categorizes the building, which stretches between Be'eri and Schatz Streets as having been planned in the "corridor" style (a continuum of construction along the length of the street), which is characteristic of the main streets in the city center and imparts a European character to them.

The building, designed in the modern style typical of the Mandate period, has a convex corner that follows the line of the intersection, and a saw-tooth stone strip that divides the first two stories from the third story. The stone strip that is typical of Abram's style appears in many other buildings he designed in the city center, including the Beit Mar Chaim building opposite Beit Froumine.

Up until the end of 1949, meetings of the Provisional State Council and the first Knesset sessions had been held in several Tel Aviv locations, including the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Dizengoff House (today Independence Hall), and in the "Kessem" movie house located at Knesset Square.

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Wikipedia