Explore the rich architectural history of Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road – while it lasts
As demolitions and skyscrapers forever alter the landscape around the capital’s first paved street outside the Old City, the time to explore its hidden treasures is running out
Sixty years ago this month, I visited Israel for the first time with a Jewish youth group from Minnesota. We were based in Jerusalem, staying at the unpretentious Ron Hotel on Jaffa Road, and from there we toured the country.
We were unaware of the importance of the street on which we lodged. But Jaffa Road had been the very first street paved outside the Old City Walls way back in the 1860s. Excited and enthusiastic, early residents and shopkeepers quickly lined the street with houses and stores. Nearly 200 years later, Jaffa Road bursts with monuments to our pre-state and Zionist heritage.
Those emerging 19th and early 20th-century homes and shops were generally a delightful combination of eclectic European and Arab architecture covered in a warm reddish and bronze stone. This picturesque byway remained almost unchanged, albeit with clean and shiny facades, until just over a decade ago. That is when skyscrapers begin springing up everywhere along the road. Thus today, Jaffa Road is filled with modern towers and looks only vaguely like the picturesque byway, oozing history, of the past. How did this happen?
Israel’s first skyscraper was built in Tel Aviv at the end of the 1950s. Called Shalom Meir Tower, it was nearly 40 stories high and the tallest building in the Holy Land.
In order to make way for it, however, the very first Hebrew High School in the world, established in 1905, was torn down. Unlike the modern tower, it had been quite beautiful. Indeed, its lovely design often reminded onlookers of the First Temple as described over the centuries.
Unfortunately, notes Tzafi Shelef, Jerusalem district manager for the Council for the Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites, although there was a public outcry, it wasn’t until 1984 that the establishment realized how much of our country’s history was being wiped out by modern construction. At that time the council was founded, in law. Its goal: to protect and preserve buildings and sites of cultural and historic value while connecting us with our past. While the council is an advisory body and has no legal power to halt projects that destroy our heritage, it can object to proposed plans and offer alternate suggestions, which are often adopted. And sometimes they are not.
For there are towers absolutely everywhere on Jaffa Road, high up behind historic dwellings, looming tall as replacements of splendid early buildings, and blocking out many of our city’s treasured structures. Skyscraper construction on Jaffa Road continues with a vengeance, even during these particularly difficult times. Projects that ignore our heritage in favor of money-making schemes are constantly submitted for approval, making it crucial for the council, as our “watchdogs,” to be vigilant.
Still, while some of the street’s original buildings are overshadowed by towers, a few still stand on their own. Among these few are Sansur and Abulafiya, corner buildings located just opposite each other on Jaffa Road.
Considered exceptionally beautiful at the time, the convex Sansur building completed in 1929 was the initiative of Christian Arab cigarette manufacturer Kamal Sansur from Bethlehem. It stood on a corner across from another rounded building named for Jewish lawyer David Abulafiya. In several of his books, architect David Kroyanker tells the fascinating tale of the Abulafiya building’s construction. He writes that the Abulafiya building was planned as a seven-story “high rise.” However, construction began in 1936, just when Arabs began three years of riots against the British rulers of Palestine. This made it impossible to remove the lovely stones in Arab quarries used in Jerusalem construction.
But Sansur owed money to Abulafiya. In exchange for payment, Abulafiya was given stones from huge piles that Sansur had collected to add stories to his building. The Abulafiya building was finally completed in 1939.
Beit Sansur, or the Sansour House in English, featured a coffee shop called the Europe Café. This was a vastly popular meeting place for Jews, Arabs, and British during the Mandate period. On summer evenings they would spend the hours dancing in the inner garden.
Yet while Sansur and Abulafiya remain untouched, the lovely Zion Hotel, just over 80 years old, is squashed between two modern high rises. And all that remains of the historic 19th-century Talitha Kumi orphanage, the first building on King George Street, is the entrance, complete with clock and chimney. It dates back to the 1860s and was torn down in 1980.
Instead of restoring the very first three homes in the Nahalat Shiva, a neighborhood over 100 years old, these historic houses were demolished a few decades ago and replaced with a six-story structure possessing, unfortunately, few saving architectural graces.
Quite a few of the street’s original buildings remain in place, but are dwarfed by towers next to and in front of them. One is the Duwek building, 90 years old, a three-story structure with an unusual entrance and built of warm brownish-orange stone.
Another is the Lady Stern Hotel, completed in 1908 and built as a retirement home for Jerusalem’s elderly. Although originally made up of three buildings constructed around a courtyard, today only one remains and acts as the hotel lobby which anyone can enter.
Still in one piece (except for one of a pair of marble lions that disappeared a few years ago) is the historic 19th-century police station. It was put up by the Turks as part of a chain of 17 defensive fortresses along the road between Jaffa and Jerusalem.
In the beginning it was only one story high, but in the middle of the 20th century the British Consul moved out of the Old City walls and into the building. The consul enlarged the first story and added a second along with a stable in the yard for the horses and donkeys used for travel. There was a garden, a special entrance with pillars and marble lions, and a decorative stone wall. During the British Mandate, it became the Mahane Yehuda police station. Today, two enormous towers dwarf this historic structure.
A tower nearly 30 stories high also soars over the Mercantile Bank on Jaffa Road, a handsome structure with red rafters built by a German merchant in 1908. Locally, it is known as the House of the Messiah, because it was purchased by Mashiah (Messiah) Borochov, a man whose first name is a common one among Jews from Bukhara. The entrance is flanked by twin pillars connected by decorative ironwork that features the date of construction. Topping the pillars are two proud lions — or there were, until one of the statues was stolen.
The Kokia House is a gorgeous mansion built in the 19th century and one of the first houses to appear outside the Old City. In the early years it was rented out to the Austrian government; later it became the headquarters of the British secret service. When tourists grace our fair city, the house hosts a wonderful visitor center where it showcases all the riches the Land of Israel has to offer.
Next door stands the Ticho House, the splendid home of famous ophthalmologist Dr. Abraham Ticho. Built in the middle of the 19th century, the house features vaulted ceilings, arched entrances, and a lush garden. Inside is a lovely museum with galleries, ceiling paintings discovered during renovations, and exhibits.
Both of these remarkable structures have been cut off by high rises on Jaffa Road. In the future, they will be even more isolated by two skyscrapers to be constructed in a parking lot just behind Jaffa Road.
The Etz Haim Yeshiva was one of the most important institutions of the 19th-century Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem. Although originally slated for preservation, the structure was suddenly threatened with demolition to make room for two 15-story buildings with shops and offices. In the end, the historic 110-year-old building was saved, but is completely cut off from view. All that passersby can see is the row of shops in front that financed the yeshiva.
And what does the future hold? In one case, towers will completely cut off the sun from the Sephardic Orphanage, an institution that dates back to 1908 when there was a very real threat that Christian missionary organizations would take Jewish orphans under their wings. Today the building holds a religious school where pupils sit in the dark or are exposed only to artificial lighting.
Shelef believes that historic buildings should be repaired and renovated and that the public should be allowed inside them and out. However, the Ron Hotel, completed in 1926, boasts a famous balcony that is open to guests only.
It was on this balcony that former prime minister Menachem Begin emerged from the Jewish pre-state underground on August 3, 1948, and made an historic speech. Over the previous five years, Begin had headed the Irgun, a radical underground movement intent on pushing the British out of Palestine. Now, from high above the crowds, Begin announced that he was disbanding the Irgun, and that his soldiers were joining the Israel Defense Forces. An historic moment indeed.
Future plans for the Ron Hotel (today called the Jerusalem Hostel Guest House) call for adding stories on top. Not two, or even three, but if the entrepreneurs’ projected plan goes forward, it will gain nine modern stories with 180 guest rooms.
Aviva Bar-Am is the author of seven English-language guides to Israel.
Shmuel Bar-Am is a licensed tour guide who provides private, customized tours in Israel for individuals, families and small groups.
