ued to expand in 1926, but suffered an economic setback between 1927 and 1930. The Ben Gurion House was built in 1930–31, part of a new worker's housing development. At the same time, cultural life was given a boost by the establishment of the Ohel Theater and the decision of Habima Theatre to make Tel Aviv its permanent base in 1931.
The Tel Aviv Port was opened on 23 February 1938, and closed on 25 October 1965.
Tel Aviv gained municipal status in 1934. The population rose dramatically during the Fifth Aliyah when the Nazis came to power in Germany. As the Jews fled Europe, many settled in Tel Aviv, bringing the population in 1937 to 150,000, compared to Jaffa's 69,000 residents. Within two years, it had reached 160,000, which was over a third of the country's total Jewish population. Many new immigrants remained after disembarking in Jaffa, turning the city into a centre of urban life. In the wake of the 1936–39 Arab revolt, a local port independent of Jaffa was built in 1938, and Lydda Airport (later Ben Gurion Airport) and Sde Dov Airport opened between 1937 and 1938.
Tel Aviv's White City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003, emerged in the 1930s. Many of the German Jewish architects trained at the Bauhaus, the Modernist school of architecture closed by the Nazis in 1933, fled Germany. Some, like architect Arieh Sharon, came to Palestine and adapted the architectural outlook of the Bauhaus as well as other similar schools, to local conditions, creating what is recognized as the largest concentration of buildings in the International Style in the world.
Tel Aviv was a major target of the Italian Bombing of Palestine in World War II. On 9 September 1940, 137 were killed in the bombing of Tel Aviv.
According to the 1947 UN Partition Plan for dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Tel Aviv, by then a city of 230,000, was slated for inclusion in the Jewish state. Jaffa with, as of 1945, a population of 101,580
