Yehuda Magidovitch

Yehuda Magidovitch was born in 1886 in Uman

Yehuda Magidovitch was born in 1886 in Uman, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Binyamin Zvi, was a hatter, and his mother, Rachel, was a homemaker. He studied in a heder and trained at the art school in Odessa from 1903 to 1910.

In 1911 he married Etil Fogel, and the couple had 2 sons, Raphael and Avshalom. He worked for architects and contractors in Russia. In 1919 he moved to the Land of Israel with his family on the ship Ruslan and settled in Tel Aviv.

He served as the first city engineer of Tel Aviv from 1920 to 1923 and sat on the city's first town planning committee. In 1923 he founded his own design and construction firm, which his son Raphael joined in 1934. His early work was eclectic, and from the early 1930s he moved toward Art Deco and then the International Style.

A stroke in 1954 ended his professional work. He died in Tel Aviv in 1961 and was buried in Kiryat Shaul Cemetery. A memorial site in his honor opened on Nahalat Binyamin pedestrian mall in 2019.