The outskirts of the Kiryat Yuval neighborhood and the road going down to the Ein Kerem neighborhood, the year 1965.
Kiryat Yuval was established in the early 1950s in the southwest of the city.
The neighborhood was built on the ruins of Beit Mazmil, which some people think is the Arab village Beit Mazmil, but the truth is that there was never an Arab village with that name in the area, except that a stone quarry operated at the top of the mountain, and the ruin that used to be called Beit Mazmil,
or translated into Hebrew- The Stonemason‘s house.
In May 1951, the neighborhood’s first residents, settled in dilapidated construction without water and electricity.
In 1953, another 100 families were housed in the Amidar buildings, in small stone houses of 4 families who huddled together, family by family, on their children in an area of 33 square meters.
An area that today is considered a respectable master suite, and on a small plot of land.
Later, two asbestos dwellings were built in the neighborhood – shacks built of wood, asbestos and a tiled roof.
The two asbestos complexes built at the same time were Between the neighborhood and the Ein Kerem neighborhood, and in the wadi bordering to the south and today’s city of Ganim.
Later, they began to build stone housing for the asbestos residents, additional housing for the general public, and separate housing for veterans of the Histadrut and housing for Ministry of Labor employees.
This is how the connected and close-to-the-plate housing was built alongside the housing of the asbestos residents, new immigrants from different social and family statuses, alongside an organized population working with “permanence” – the magic word of those years.
Conflict is structured in a geographically bounded area.
At the beginning of its years, the neighborhood was considered a weak neighborhood that was paved with housing for civil servants and the salaried class of the time.
The momentum of development in the neighborhood grew, and in 1958 the neighborhood already had about 15,000 residents.
The proximity of Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital and the students who lived in the dormitories on Guatemala Street brought a young and fresh spirit to the neighborhood.
At the end of 1953, 33 plots of land were given on today’s Shmariahu Levin Street, and Hantaka Street, and the wealthy people of the city, contractors and diplomats.
In the photo, taken in 1965 from the Beit Vegan neighborhood, you can see on the left the houses being built on Shmariahu Levin street lots, which sit on the slopes of the mountain and overlook the descent road to the Ein Kerem neighborhood.
To their right on the horizon is the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, and on the slopes of the mountain and in the valley between them – the Ein Kerem neighborhood.
In front of the buildings on the right side of the valley, the Yad Vashem complex was built at the same time to commemorate the Holocaust and heroism, and above it Mount Herzl, and the section of the great men of the nation.
The narrow road on the left at the bottom of the picture is the Herzl axis.
And today…
The Kiryat Yuval neighborhood on the left is full of buildings and housing and is currently one of the leading neighborhoods in the city in accelerated eviction and construction processes.
The housing estates that were built cheaply and hastily on large areas of land are already 50-60 years old and end their historical role as construction exhibits for the state’s early days, gradually giving way to huge stone towers planned for the axis of the light rail that is being built these days.
Tremendous changes are taking place in the neighborhood that was founded with shacks without electricity and water, wooden and asbestos buildings and sawn-stone railroad housing, ugly and without any grace.
The blessed and continuous increase in the country’s population and the housing crisis will bring with them hundreds of new families who will in the future inhabit the huge complexes that are changing beyond recognition the face of the sleepy neighborhood,
Because the place is already too narrow to accommodate.
When history turns to hysteria.
This is our Jerusalem-
New immigrants without electricity and water who were brought to a mountain that was considered at the time to be the end of the world, asbestosis, poverty and crime, next to civil servants and medical students, an old quarry next to the light rail axis,
And one Herzl, who looks out from the top of the opposite mountain-
He sighs and scratches his beard.
A peaceful week far and near from Jerusalem
Photo by – @ the archives of the late Yitzchak Saad
