The Red House, Public building in central Tel Aviv, Israel

The Red House stood above Gordon Beach at 115 Hayarkon Street, where the Sheraton Tel Aviv hotel now stands. It was a two-part building: a taller narrow block with a flat roof and rounded parapet, its walls mixing exposed dark brick and smooth pale plaster, with a large open arch on the upper level and a rectangular opening below. A raised horizontal band ran across the facade, and small rectangular windows sat in a pale base. To the right, a lower wing had a two-tier open balcony with dark vertical railings and square openings behind, with a small external stair at the far right.

The Red House was built between 1923 and 1926 by the Tel Aviv platoon of Gdud HaAvoda, designed by Dov Hershkowitz in the eclectic style of the period. Its walls were painted reddish, the colour of the socialist ideology, which gave the building its name. It served the Tel Aviv and Jaffa Workers' Council, the Working Youth centre and the Gordonia centre, and from the 1930s the Haganah used it to command illegal immigration operations. From early 1948 until the end of the War of Independence it housed the Haganah general staff; four days after the declaration of the state the staff moved to Givat HaChalma in Ramat Gan. The building was demolished in the 1970s and the Tel Aviv Sheraton hotel was built on the site.

The name comes from the reddish paint applied to its walls, the colour of the socialist ideology its builders followed. Workers came to the club in the evenings and sang and danced on the beach below. In 1936 the Nahman Syrkin reading room opened and the labour archive moved in, taking a whole floor, with the HaNoar HaOved headquarters beside it. Two memorial plaques now stand on the site, one for the house and one for Gdud HaAvoda, the labour battalion whose members built it.

The building no longer exists: it was demolished in the 1970s and the Tel Aviv Sheraton hotel now occupies the site at 115 Hayarkon Street, above Gordon Beach. Two memorial plaques placed by the Tel Aviv municipality mark the spot, one for the Red House and one for the Gdud HaAvoda labour battalion whose members built it.

The building was demolished in the 1970s and the Tel Aviv Sheraton Hotel was built on the site; the hotel's previous home was at the western end of Nordau Boulevard. Tel Aviv Municipality placed two memorial plaques here, one for the Red House and one for the Gdud HaAvoda labour battalion whose members built it.