Gymnasia Herzliya was the country's first Hebrew high school,[1] founded in 1905 in Jaffa, part of the Ottoman Empire in those days.

The cornerstone-laying for the school's new building on Herzl Street in the Ahuzat Bayit neighborhood (the nucleus of future Tel Aviv) took place on July 28, 1909.

The master plan for Ahuzat Bayit (the original name for Tel Aviv) prominently featured the large plot allocated for the first Hebrew gymnasium.

During the cornerstone-laying ceremony for its permanent building in the month of Av 5669, the founder, Dr. Metman, said: “Another architect, another teacher in our nation—these are certainly needed, but much more must still be created within our people.

To this day, tens of thousands of alumni have graduated from Herzliya Gymnasium and are actively involved in the fields of culture, entertainment, arts, and academia.The building on Herzl Street was a major Tel Aviv landmark until 1962, when the site was razed for the construction of Shalom Meir Tower.

The Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel was founded in the 1980s partly in response to the fate of Herzliya Hebrew High School.