Down the storied streets of Mamilla

Just outside the Old City lies a tale of destruction, division, unification and renewal.

By AVIVA BAR-AM
Mamilla mall in Jerusalem (photo credit: SHMUEL BAR-AM)
Mamilla mall in Jerusalem
(photo credit: SHMUEL BAR-AM)
Forty-six-year-old Yitzhak Penso was one of the first Jews killed in Jerusalem during the War of Independence.
Penso had joined the Hagana at the age of 16, during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt against the British and the Jews in Palestine. During World War II, he joined the British Army and took part in battles in Libya, Egypt and Italy. But on December 3, 1947, he was slaughtered by an Arab horde while attempting to rescue Jewish goods in the still-burning shops of the Mamilla commercial center.
This week’s Street Stroll takes you into the Mamilla neighborhood, with its incredible story of destruction, division, unification and renewal. Located on the seam that connects the old and new cities, Mamilla stretches from the Jaffa Gate and the adjacent walls west to King David Street, between IDF Square and Yemin Moshe.
You will begin your jaunt just outside the Jaffa Gate and end up at an overlook with a view of the Old City walls. A gable stuck onto the gate’s exterior wall is all that remains of the dozens of shops, consulates, banks and guest houses that completely covered the area from just outside the Jaffa Gate to today’s IDF Square in the early 1900s. This was also the city’s central station: Here camel convoys dropped off all manner of supplies, carriages came and went with passengers, and wagons moved food and goods from place to place.
Many buildings, like the two-story structure that sports the gable, were actually attached to the wall. During the Mandate period, the British – who were big on historical preservation – took some of them down to create more space next to the wall. They also removed an ornamental clock tower that had been erected on the gate to honor the Turkish sultan’s long reign, temporarily relocating it to IDF (at the time Allenby) Square.
A ceramic tile beneath the gable, produced by the fledgling Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, reads “Jaffa Gate” in Palestine’s three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew. The word “Bezalel” is still visible in tiny letters in the lower left-hand corner.
From the railings on the plaza, there is a good view of the road that runs between David’s Village – with its strange gray domes – and the Mamilla Mall. Originally called Emek (Valley) Street, it was later renamed for the unpopular and often forgotten mayor of Jerusalem who was in office from 1952-1955: Yitzhak Kariv.
Most of the original structures in Mamilla were built in the mid-1880s by both Jews and Arabs as houses, shops and offices that served as an extension of the crowded commercial center next to the Jaffa Gate. By the time the British came along, Mamilla already featured a vast variety of commercial enterprises: workshops, notions stores, gourmet restaurants, fancy dress shops, residences, a large hotel, and the first Cadillac dealership in the Middle East.
Businesses flourished.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations approved a plan to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The country’s Arabs were incensed, swearing to prevent its formation with the last drop of their blood.
Almost immediately, the Arab High Committee called for a three-day Arab strike to begin on December 2. That day, hundreds of enraged Arabs swarmed out of the Jaffa and Damascus gates on a march into downtown (Jewish) Jerusalem. Before they reached their goal, however, shots fired in the air by members of the Hagana caused them to halt – and to move backward into Mamilla. Screaming slogans and armed with knives and iron bars, they began looting and ransacking Jewish shops. Then they set them on fire.
In the violence, which continued for two more days, Mamilla was almost completely demolished. And what wasn’t destroyed during the riots was devastated during the War of Independence that followed.
When the war ended, Mamilla found itself on the border, directly across from Jordanian snipers. Most of the neighborhood was in Israeli territory, but a fair portion became part of the city’s no-man’s land, filled with mines, barricades and barbed wire. Destitute new immigrants were settled, or settled themselves, in the ruins of shops and buildings that the Arabs had abandoned.
After the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 and the removal of the eyesore that was no-man’s land, plans began to form for rehabilitation of the ravaged Mamilla neighborhood. Decades of conflict between architects and designers ended when the first stage of the Alrov Mamilla Avenue opened in 2007. Designed by architect Moshe Safdie and developed by the Alrov Group, the open-air mall is a welcome addition to the Jerusalem scene, connecting old Jerusalem with the new – just as it did until 1947.
YOU CAN enter the mall by descending the stairs (or you can look for the ramp), and begin walking around. Almost everything that once stood here was gutted, in some cases to make it possible to build a parking lot underneath the mall. A few of the façades remain, while others were taken apart and put back almost exactly as they were. But all of the insides have been redone. And some of the olderlooking stone façades are actually new.
Note the excellent finish, so rare in Jerusalem construction. The facades are standardized and beautifully designed, and even the manholes are fairly pretty.
Throughout the mall, the floor tiles change their look and feature all kinds of geometric patterns. Adding to the mall’s attraction is an exciting variety of highquality sculptures, both comical and serious, which get replaced with new ones every few months.
Just before 6 Mamilla Avenue, a photo on the right depicts the earlier Mamilla.
Then, as you near the Castro store on the left, a small group of stunning buildings comes into view on the right. The most beautiful is the three-story structure sporting a crenellated roof, built by Herbert Edgar Clark in 1898. It is faced with a Mameluke-type red-and-white stone design and has oriental-style doors and windows. Even the balcony floors are lovely, made of Italian marble from Carrera, and the railings are unusually intricate.
Clark was nine when his family moved to Palestine as part of the devoutly Protestant group that settled the American Colony in Jaffa. The colony failed, and most of its members returned to their native Maine. But the Clarks remained, and Herbert’s sister married Rollo Floyd – the entrepreneur who established a carriage service between Jaffa and Jerusalem. At some point, Clark began managing the regional branch of Thomas Cook, which was the largest and most famous travel agency in the world.
From 1905 to 1907, he served as American vice consul in Jerusalem.
When he died in 1920, he was buried in the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion.
Fortunately his house, which was slated for demolition in early plans, was restored instead.
As you continue, you will soon reach a wide, double flight of stairs. Towering above it is the St. Vincent de Paul Convent and Hospice, the first building to appear on this side of Mamilla Avenue.
Running the complex is the Daughters (Sisters) of Charity, an order of mainly French nuns founded by St. Vincent de Paul on November 29, 1633.
Following their arrival in the Holy Land in 1886, the sisters moved into the Christian Quarter and treated patients living inside the Old City. They also worked with the leper colony in nearby Silwan.
Construction began on St.
Vincent’s in 1886, and in 1892, as soon as it was ready, the nuns moved into the western portion of the convent. With completion of the façade and the rest of the building a few years later, the sisters were able to open an orphanage. Finally, in 1911, a basilica-style church was added to the complex. Today the nuns provide loving care for severely disabled children.
The clergy at St. Vincent’s showed excellent business acumen: They put up a row of stores in front of the church and convent, and rented them out to help finance their charitable works. The shops, one story high and rented out to both Jews and Arabs, still remain: They begin right next to the staircase, divided by the original gate to St.
Vincent’s Hospice.
The building just across the walkway is completely covered with numbers. Built by German immigrant Yehuda Stern in 1870, it is known to one and all as Herzl House.
In 1898, Theodor Herzl traveled to Palestine. His visit was timed for the week when Wilhelm II would also be in Jerusalem, as Herzl wanted to enlist the German emperor’s support for a Jewish homeland. Clark took care of most of the arrangements for both of their trips.
Herzl spent his first – and extremely uncomfortable – night in Jerusalem at the overcrowded Kaminitz Hotel on Jaffa Road. Afterward, however, he was invited to lodge with the Stern family in Mamilla, turning the house into a historic site. As such, when plans to rehabilitate Mamilla included its destruction, a public outcry turned things around. Each brick in the exterior of the building was marked, removed and returned – to a site only a short distance from its original location.
A STAIRCASE leads to the Mamilla Café at 14 Mamilla Avenue, one of the restaurants in the Mamilla Hotel, which opened in 2009 as an integral part of the Alrov project. Boutique in concept, with chic, ultra-modern rooms, the Mamilla Hotel’s design is a tantalizing combination of oldfashioned and new. Besides the café, the hotel boasts a “mirror” bar, as well as an exclusive rooftop restaurant with a fantastic view of the city.
Your last point of interest in the mall is right next to the hotel: a series of beautiful arches.
Completely covered up until the mall’s restoration, they belong to one of the oldest buildings in Mamilla. At various points in time, it has housed travelers whom the Thomas Cook agency brought over, functioned as a community center for the Musrara neighborhood, and served as the Mensa – a lowcost restaurant frequented by Hebrew University students whose departments transferred from Mount Scopus to the center of town during the years that Jerusalem was divided.
If you ascend the steps up to Shlomo Hamelech Street and turn right, you can enter the hotel for a look at its unusual interior. Afterward, you can come back, exit the mall, follow the crosswalks to the left side of King David Street and turn left.
That will take you to David’s Village, which you can enter on the diagonal walkway next to a large monument honoring Canadians (donors, perhaps?).
You will walk down Yismah David Street under decorative arches and next to lush planters in what is, essentially, a ghost town: Most of the American and French Jews who own these apartments generally show up only during holidays and for family visits.
David’s Village is built over the ruins of the Mamilla neighborhood’s shops and houses. You can view all that remains of that neighborhood by walking to the end of Yismah David Street and going up the steps on the left, then immediately turning left, passing through the gate and turning right.
The Tannous brothers, wealthy Arab contractors, built an enormous residential and commercial enterprise on this site during the Mandate period.
From 1948 to 1967, although it was heavily damaged in the Mamilla riots, it housed dozens of destitute immigrants who suffered continuously from Jordanian sniper fire.
When the Tannous Building was demolished in 1990, the original letters on its façade were removed. Later, they were inserted into this wall bordering David’s Village.
At the end of the wall, you can climb the steps to the right, then cross the street and turn left at the sign for the Confederation House. If you ascend the steps and watch for an arched pergola on the left, you can find a marvelous view of the Old City Walls and the Jaffa Gate – where you started out.