At the beginning of the 20th century, the Jewish community gradually moved from Jalija (Lower Dorćol) toward Zerek (Upper Dorćol). It consisted of wealthy merchants, bankers, industrialists, hoteliers, booksellers, and lawyers.

Affluent Jews gradually occupied the main town streets and squares, as evidenced by numerous buildings erected by Jewish merchants along the principal commercial street, Dubrovačka (today Kralja Petra Street).

These buildings testify that their builders followed modern artistic trends of the time—Art Nouveau—which was spreading across Europe.

The most significant example of this new style is certainly the Department Store building, the first modern retail house constructed at Dubrovačka (Kralja Petra) no. 16. It was designed by the young engineer Viktor David Azriel.

Viktor Azriel’s family was an old Sephardic family from Belgrade. His grandfather, Haim Azriel, was a merchant and owner of a shop in Lower Dorćol, opposite the Old Synagogue. Viktor’s father was engaged in wholesale grain trade and was an active member of the Jewish Community, serving for a time as its president.

Viktor Azriel was born in 1880. He completed primary school and high school in Belgrade and studied civil engineering at the Faculty of Engineering in Vienna. At the beginning of the 20th century, he returned to Belgrade and, based on a license obtained in 1906, gained the right to practice as an engineer.

His first known construction work was the reconstruction of his family home in Dorćol. In May 1907, the ceremonial construction of the Bet Israel Synagogue in Cara Uroša Street began, under the supervision of Viktor Azriel.

At the same time, he was commissioned to design and oversee the construction of the building for Bencion Buli, a well-known banker and member of parliament.

The building is relatively small, with a base of 8 × 20 meters. It consists of a basement, ground floor, and two upper floors. The top floor is completely separated by an iron ceiling and intended for storage, while offices are located at the rear, behind the retail space.

The specific purpose of the building allowed the designer freedom in treating the interior and in applying modern construction methods.

As a civil engineer, Azriel was responsible for introducing a modern skeletal structure made of iron profiles and reinforced concrete. The building features a unified interior space with galleries across four levels.

At the time it was built, the structure represented a significant innovation due to its street façade designed as a transparent curtain wall, made of a thin metal structure filled with glass, topped with an elegant segmental arch in reinforced concrete.

The decorative treatment of the façade is stylized with floral ornaments in the spirit of Viennese Secession. At the top of the stone pilasters are sculpturally modeled female heads with lush hair, beneath which decorative bands form interwoven triangular and circular motifs.

The Buli family’s department store was the first building associated with the modern method of selling goods in large retail warehouses, designed according to the principles of European Art Nouveau.

The building was declared a cultural monument by a decision of the Belgrade City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in 1966.

Today, the building is owned by the Jewish Community of Belgrade under the Law on Property Restitution to Religious Communities enacted in 2006.