In the photo, you can see the infrastructure and the construction preparation for the “luxury neighborhood” in 1964.
The Dania Company for Development Ltd, which would later be called Dania Sibus, began the Ramat Danya neighborhood’s construction in 1964. The neighborhood was built on the farmland of the abandoned Arab village Malha and is located between the Kiryat HaYovel neighborhood, Beit Vagan, and today’s Malha neighborhood.
Ramat Danya was designed as a luxury neighborhood for the affluent secular population of Jerusalem. Among its residents, there were doctors, intellectuals, lawyers, members of the Knesset, different professionals, and city council members; the young Jerusalemite elite, in contrast with the old Rehavia neighborhood.
This small neighborhood, with only a few thousand residents, was characterized by a high living standard and tranquility, with several public gardens between the buildings. Until 2012, no public transportation route crossed the neighborhood.
After the neighborhood was established, in the mid-sixties, a municipal landfill should have been built on its outskirts … the kind of freedom you encounter in Jerusalem.
But even then, just like now, the right connections, combined with public pressures and the residents’ protests convinced the authorities to move the landfill to the Beit Tzafa neighborhood.
Dania Park was built on the site that was initially reserved for the landfill, and at its end and near the Kiryat Yoval neighborhood, tennis courts were built.
In recent years, the neighborhood’s atmosphere has changed, the secular elite, the doctors, and lawyers left for neighborhoods such as Mevaseret Zion, the moshavim located in the western part of the city, Mount Adar and Tel Aviv.
High buildings were built on one side of the neighborhood and private residencies on the other side of the Beit Vagan neighborhood. New populations were assimilated.
This is our Jerusalem — a neighborhood next to a city landfill that was never built, connections, residents’ protests, immigration, tennis courts and national competitions, and Hapoel Jerusalem, which will always be the nemesis of Beitar fans.
Shabbat of peace far and near Jerusalem
Photo — courtesy of the late Yitzhak Saad’s photo collection
