The downtown trophy wife

Is it sensible to take a center-city area that up to now has been characterized by a mix of uses, and to designate it solely for "culture and tourism?"

Relatedly: should historic buildings be, on principle, emptied of workaday uses and dedicated exclusively to "culture and tourism" uses (e.g., boutique hotels)?

Such is the approach that the Jerusalem Municipality is currently taking toward Jaffa Road and environs -- the area that most locals simply think of as "downtown" but which is increasingly being referred to as the "historic city."

I think that this approach needs to be subjected to public scrutiny. I, for one, see two major problems with it:

1) The segregation of uses that it imposes will make downtown Jerusalem a much less attractive destination for regular Jerusalemites and Israelis, essentially rendering it a tourist trap whose artificiality will be perceived by the more discerning tourists;

2) By removing historic buildings from circulation as facilities where normal, everyday activities take place, and by devoting them to tourist-oriented uses, the planning echelon will be dividing Jerusalemites and Israelis from their own architectural heritage, thereby impoverishing them culturally.

As noted in my last post, which discussed the recently-approved plan for a high-rise office park at Jerusalem's western entrance, Deputy Mayor Kobi Kahlon has stated that "anyone who doesn’t have to enter the city shouldn’t do so. Leave the historic city to culture and tourism.” Downtown Jerusalem, according to Kahlon, is simply too fragile to "take the load" of the governmental/clerical functions currently housed within it ("You toss out two pieces of paper there and the city is filthy"), and is altogether suited to the expression of "much greater meanings."  The idea is that certain activities are just too mundane for the traditional architecture of downtown Jerusalem, and should be transferred to the envisioned skyscraper complex at the city's entrance -- "Rova Mevo Ha'Ir."
 

Generali Building, via Wikipedia (Magister)

In keeping with this idea, government offices now located in Jerusalem's "historic city" are slated to be moved to Rova Mevo Ha'Ir. Furthermore, according to Haaretz, "the Planning and Building Committee is also discussing a plan to turn the old ministries' offices, some of which are located in historic buildings, into boutique hotels."

One building that has been mentioned as a prime candidate for such a re-purposing is the "Generali" Building at the corner of Jaffa Road and Shlomzion HaMalka St., built in the 1930s to house the offices of the Italian insurance agency Assicurazioni Generali. The Generali Building is currently home to a number of Israeli government offices, including the Interior Ministry's Jerusalem District administration.

I haven't had anything to do in the Generali Building in years and don't know to what extent Israeli citizens are inconvenienced by having to conduct their business in that particular location. Deputy Mayor Kahlon claims that the presence of government functions in buildings such as this one "cause[s] terrible traffic downtown, as well as parking shortages". I find this assertion rather curious, inasmuch as Jaffa Road has been closed for some time to vehicular traffic other than the light rail -- the idea being that people should get to that part of town via public transit and forego the use of their private automobiles. If you're riding the light rail, why do you need parking? How can there be traffic jams in a part of town where cars are no longer allowed?

I don't pretend to know whether public-sector efficiency is best served by concentrating government offices in one specially-designed compound -- i.e., Rova Mevo Ha'Ir. It does strike me, though, that when ordinary citizens come downtown to run errands at government facilities, downtown can only benefit-- since a citizen who enters the area for one purpose will likely remain there for others. Logically, it would seem that when downtown Jerusalem is emptied of its government offices, regular Jerusalemites and Israelis will have less occasion to go there. Are we quite certain that this is what we want?

I personally don't have much reason to go downtown, as most of my needs can be met in the Talpiot Industrial Area -- the badly-neglected "secondary" CBD that, in my view, actually functions as primary CBD for a sizeable chunk of Jerusalem's population.. However, this past summer I enjoyed a brief but instructive city-center idyll that brought home for me just what is wrong with the Kahlon plan for this part of town.

Mushtasfa Jerusalem (District Health Office building),
 via Wikipedia (Ranbar)

Pictured at left is a historic building at 86 Jaffa Road -- one that, presumably, the Municipality would want emptied of its governmental functions and turned into a boutique hotel. This Ottoman-era edifice was constructed in 1882 as a residence and later turned into a hospital; since the British Mandate period it has housed the Jerusalem district health office.

I had to bring my 3 year old daughter to this building several times this past summer, for a series of anti-rabies innoculations (after she was scratched by a stray cat). Never having needed the services of the district health office before, and having no prior knowledge of the facility's whereabouts, I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself ushering my daughter into this distinguished old structure, the formality of whose arched stone gate is set off by a soothing little front yard and welcoming, geranium-filled porch:

Rather than having to sit in an institutional waiting room for the prescribed 20 minutes post-innoculation, my daughter and I (and the other kids I brought along on the various vaccine visits) were able to enjoy our mid-morning snack out here on the district health office porch, joined by the occasional employee on coffee break. When we were through, we stayed downtown, running different errands each time. On one occasion we picked up inexpensive crafts supplies at a discount store; on another -- paperbacks at a second-hand bookshop. I got to familiarize myself with some clothing stores I had never seen before. We bought slushes and iced coffees, burekasim and cookies. We discovered a newly-renovated playground in the downtown area that constitutes a worthwhile destination in and of itself.

Had we not needed the services of the local rabies prevention unit, we would not have patronized any of the aforementioned downtown businesses. We simply wouldn't have been downtown.

Our forays to the city center were both enjoyable and productive. We didn't go there for the specific purpose of experiencing "culture." We got a healthy dose of "culture" just by taking care of some decidely mundane business at the scenic venue of the Jerusalem district health office. And we were able, afterward, to run a variety of errands on foot, within a radius of just a few city-center blocks. Culture and commerce, pleasure and efficiency -- the blessings of mixed-use development.

Unfortunately, current urban thinking in the Jerusalem Municipality appears to have stalled at the "separation of uses" stage. Much lip-service is being paid to the idea of mixed-use development, but the plans being actively adanced call for a fairly rigid compartmentalization of uses.

Whether 86 Jaffa Road in particular has a boutique future in store for it is not the point. The point is that Kobi Kahlon thinks "we have to empty [Jerusalem's historic downtown] of all the officialdom [פקידות] and other uses. This city has far greater meanings."

I'm sure that when Kahlon talks about Jerusalem's "greater meanings" his intentions are reverential -- and that is the problem. It's one thing to appreciate the city's history and to want to  preserve its unique character in those areas where "character" has a tangible presence in architectural form. However, putting specific parts of the city on a pedestal and dictating the kinds of uses that can take place in them, is quite another matter. It's almost like the objectification to which men sometimes subject women -- an idealization that ultimately devalues.  Rather than having someone alive and dynamic to relate you, you end up with a porcelain doll, a trophy wife, a puppet.

In the case of downtown Jerusalem, what we could end up with, if we're not careful, is a sterile museum in which tourists lap up lattes and empty their pockets to purveyors of kitschy Judaica while street mimes and jugglers leap and frolick in a frenzied effort to conceal the emptiness at the core of downtown -- a place where no actual work goes on, where no real life is lived, where nothing productive happens. 

We already have an "Old City" that is devoted to religion, tourism and religious tourism. Do we really want to start calling that part of town the "Old Old City?" Must Jaffa Road now become a "New Old City" -- a static Disneyland of handsome traditional architecture housing nothing but cafes and boutiques?

I don't want to be unfair to Kobi Kahlon. I have no problem with his desire to add office space in the city entrance area or even, necessarily, with the transfer of government agencies to that part of town -- provided that such transfers are clearly in the public interest. What bothers me is the assumption that governmental and commercial/corporate affairs are best managed out of dedicated skyscraper complexes, while historic downtowns and traditional architecture should play a merely ornamental role in the life of a city. In the present post I have looked at the latter half of this false dichotomy. In my next post I hope to discuss the former in greater depth.

Jerusalem's Rova Mevo Ha'Ir: copying the wrong Parisian model

A couple of decades ago, give or take half a decade, I spent an academic year in Paris on an American study abroad program. After 10 months of thumbing my little red Plan de Paris par arrondissement (= old-school GPS) to a pulp, I found myself facing a summer short on cash -- but unwilling to retreat to the States before I could legitimately claim to have spent an entire calendar year in Europe.

Luckily Georges, the heroically non-judgmental and patient program director, was able to arrange temporary work permits for such underfunded students who insisted on remaining abroad.

 Which was how I found myself, over a period of several weeks, shuttling from picturesque central Paris to the futuristic La Défense business district at the city's western outskirts, where I had landed a job heating up frozen croissants and serving "instant" espresso to those employed in the surrounding skyscrapers.

La Défense -- Stairway to Heaven by
Dmitri A. Mottle, via Wikimedia Commons

By "shuttling" I of course mean a Métro ride, but a space-shuttle association would not be far off the mark. Going to La Défense was like rocketing or beaming up to the moon or some kind of space station carved into a forbidding alien landscape that, by dint of hard labor, had been made marginally habitable for humans, but not attractive to them. Considering that I had spent most of a year tirelessly criss-crossing the streets of traditional Paris, it says something that I never spent a moment in La Défense beyond what the timeclock dictated. The fact that I was working -- though technically in Paris! -- in a fast-food joint  à l'américaine, serving up bad imitation French cuisine to Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who, in any other setting, would surely have turned up their noses at such travesties, said it all.

So my question is, why would Jerusalem want to do this to itself?

The Israeli (and international) media have lately been abuzz (in English: here, here and here) over an "ambitious" plan to transform Jerusalem's western entrance area -- referred to in Hebrew as Rova Mevo Ha'Ir -- into a sleek and ultramodern business district, complete with the skyscrapers that are thought necessary to project a municipal image of exuberant money-making. "The city as economic engine."

The plans for Rova Mevo Ha'Ir have actually been in the works for several years (Mayor Nir Barkat, who assumed office in 2009, was the project's primary initiator). When the plans were first publicized, a similarity to Paris' La Défense district was proudly proclaimed. Apparently,  the mere hint of a resemblance to something European was thought sufficient to place the project in a positive light.

La Défense is not normally considered a success from the perspective of urban vitality. One author and lecturer in the urban planning sphere, Alex Marshall, calls the complex "stunningly dead." Charles Siegel , writing recently at Planetizen, points out that there are better models for smart growth than the "stale modernist model of La Défense." In fact, when the Rova Mevo Ha'Ir plans were first publicized in 2009, and hailed as Jerusalem's answer to La Défense, Siegel commented, again at Planetizen, "Virtually everyone agrees that La Défense blighted Paris' skyline and is an anti-urban design. Just what Jerusalem needs to destroy its historical character."

Unfortunately, those charged with planning Rova Mevo Ha'Ir seem unable to differentiate between design elements likely to foster vibrancy and ones liable to create deadness. Much lipservice is paid to designing with the pedestrian in mind, but the plans themselves paint a different picture.

The slideshow prepared by Farhi Zafrir, the architectural firm that won the Rova Mevo Ha'Ir competition, is a frustrating mish-mash of declared aspirations to walkable urbanism and simulation images that give such aspirations the lie.

Not the least annoying feature of the slideshow is its dubious referencing of traditional city design -- its deployment of photos of bustling European streets featuring human-scaled low- and mid-rise architecture -- in order to "prove" the value of the monolithic skyscraper project that it is actually trying to sell.

Farhi Zafrir first make a ploy for audience sympathy by describing, in Slide 2, the current sorry state of the Jerusalem entrance area. That part of town is certainly a mess -- as the architects put it, "sparse and dispersed construction," "separate and isolated compounds," "a roadway rather than a street." The pictures speak for themselves. Yes, almost anything would be better.

In Slide 3 the architects treat the viewer to a warm and fuzzy photo selection featuring narrow, Nathan Lewis-type streets, European version, full of fine-grained architectural detail and hip young city dwellers doing their thing en masse. "Priority to pedestrians" is the slogan here.

Having been thus buttered up, the viewer is then meant to be duly impressed by slides 4-11, which show us how Farhi Zafrir are going to rescue us from the dreaded stroad situation that currently exists, by building an architecturally monotonous, dedicated business, government-office and hotel district (the Israeli planning echelon's idea of "mixed-use development").

via Jerusalem Municipality

Yes, there is an emphasis on transit-oriented development here -- the project's much-touted connectivity to the Jerusalem light rail and the (future) high-speed Tel Aviv -Jerusalem train. Yet it is disturbing that all this accessibility is meant, ultimately, to keep people out of Jerusalem's historic downtown -- to artificially, and in a sense even dictatorially, concentrate certain activities -- and the people engaged in them -- in this one particular area.

For instance, the idea of transferring government ministry offices from their current locations in historic downtown buildings to the sterile office park of Rova Mevo Ha'Ir, and of turning the historic buildings into boutique hotels, may seem, at first glance, to have a certain poetic justice -- relegate the dry government paper-shufflers to dull modernist edifices! Save the pretty buildings for hunky and babalicious vacationers who can appreciate them! -- but it flies in the face of everything the New Urbanists have been telling us about real mixed-use development and the vibrancy it produces.

Deputy Mayor Kobi Kahlon has been quoted as saying, "Anyone who doesn't have to enter the city shouldn't do so. Leave the historic city to culture and tourism."  That is one of the most disturbing statements I've heard/read in a long time. Kahlon feels that by diverting jobs and government offices to the Jerusalem entrance, the "historic city" will be spared traffic congestion and "parking shortages." Unfortunately, it may also become depleted of anything resembling real life, and turn into a giant museum. I'm reminded of Alan Davies' (The Urbanist) recent description of Venice: 

In a physical sense Venice is pedestrian nirvana, but in my opinion it’s also a one dimensional city. The throngs of people along the canals are almost all tourists. The businesses only provide lodgings, food and fodder for tourists.

Is that what we want Jerusalem's historic downtown to become?

 My special bugbear: the Farhi Zafrir slideshow references La Défense (slide 12), in a manner that can only reflect ignorance or disingenuousness on the part of the designers.

I can't seem to copy the slides into the blog, but here is a La Défense plaza photo very similar to that used by Farhi Zafrir in slide 12 of their presentation:

David Monniaux via Wikipedia

The above photo (that is, its counterpart in slide 12 of the architects' presentation) is grouped together with a couple of photos of traditional European public squares, including an open-air market scene that looks something like this:

Street market at the bottom of  rue Mouffetard -- David Monniaux, via Wikimedia Commons

Farhi Zafrir's aim is to entice the viewer with street scenes that most people would be happy to see in their own city, and which the viewer is meant to understand that the architects are going deliver via their proposed Jerusalem entrance project. Yet one can see at a glance that the La Défense scene (the one that most closely resembles Farhi Zafrir's Rova Mevo Ha'Ir simulation) has little in common with a traditional street market scene.

In the La Défense photo, people scuttle like insects across an exceptionally uninviting, oversized plaza, dwarfed by brutal-looking buildings that do not work together as any sort of defined streetscape or provide the sense of enclosure that human beings generally require if they are to feel comfortable in a given built environment.

In the traditional-Paris street market photo, you've got it all: lovely and varied architecture on a human scale, enclosure, "intimate anonymity."

I humbly submit that this grouping of a photo of the La Défense plaza together with photos of traditional European public squares is a cheap ploy intended to persuade the public that a relatively isolated, limited-use high-rise complex can offer the pleasing urban ambience of a more traditionally-designed quarter. In my view, this reflects questionable ethics on the part of Farhi Zafrir.

It is too bad that the local planning echelon, and the architectural firm that it chose to design Rova Mevo Ha'Ir, couldn't have mustered up a bit more ambition, and devised a plan that would have increased Jerusalem's office-space supply in a style that respected the city's architectural traditions -- as in the Le Plessis-Robinson model described so compellingly by Charles Siegel. As Siegel points out, neo-traditional development can be "dense enough for smart growth" and can deliver its density "in a more attractive and livable environment than the typical modernist development."

But very likely there are no templates for neo-traditional design in the software used by Farhi Zafrir -- so they settled for a stark modernist office park, hoping to pass it off as successful urbanism.

Gan HaAgvaniya (Tomato Park), Old Katamon -- a Jerusalem Playground Review

Name: This much-loved park has an irresistible name. Who wouldn't want to go to a park named after a tomato?  Although the place had been known to me for many years, I learned its name only when my oldest son started attending Chorev Elementary School, which stands across the street from the park and supplies a large proportion of its clientele. Apparently the name refers to the park's shape, which is thought to be tomato-like, with a slightly indented shrubbery area at its "crown":

On maps of Old Katamon that I have looked at, the tomato comparison seems a bit far-fetched.

Actually the park has another, official name, inscribed on two separate plaques:

John V. Lindsay, Mayor of New York City from 1966-1973 -- a.k.a. Mayor Linseed of Gotham City ...

I did a little digging online about Harvey Rothenberg, the park donor identified on the plaque in the above photo. A successful New York City businessman and active Zionist who helped found the Jerusalem Fund, he was also a good friend of John V. Lindsay and served on Lindsay's mayoral staff for a salary of $1 per year -- somewhat reminiscent of our current shekel-a-year Jerusalem mayor. Rothenberg reminisces about his interactions with such luminaries as Golda Meir, the Shah of Iran, and Teddy Kollek, here. For a fascinating article about John V. Lindsay and his conception of New York City as an "adventure playground," click here.

It may seem unfair that a "popular" playground name should trump the name intended for it by its donor; there may be something instructive in this, something to do with the primacy of physical features in the minds of children. I don't feel capable of bucking the trend and talking about "John V. Lindsay Park" in everyday conversation, but I do think it's worthwhile to trace the donor history of parks and to honor the philanthropists who help make Jerusalem a better place. So, I hope, where relevant, to keep including donor information as a feature of my Jerusalem Playground Reviews.

Location: Kovshei Katamon Street, at the Kaf-Tet BeNovember Street intersection (across from Chorev Elementary School), Old Katamon.

Transit/Parking: Bus line 24 (Kovshei Katamon St.); plentiful on-street parking on Kovshei Katamon during most daytime hours, except for school drop-off and pick-up times.

Shade: Gan HaAgvaniya has abundant shade. I can't vouch for the central play area during all daytime hours, but a large sandbox near the park entrance (which includes a couple of spring toys and tic-tac-toe installation) is shady throughout the day:

The park's large open area is bounded by a margin of shrubbery and lovely mature trees:

Benches are scattered along the park perimeter to take advantage of the shade.

Playground equipment and features:

Large climbing/slide structure, suitable for toddlers and young children, up to about ages 6-8:

Merry-go-round

Running barrel

Small see-saw

Spring toys

"Standing" see-saw

Large, relatively clean and shady sand box with tic-tac-toe installation and spring toys:

Cat statue (good for climbing, throwing sand at):

(Plenty of real felines, too ...)

Shrubbery areas that are accessible to children for mucking around and exploring:

Lots of climbable rocks and stepping-stones:

A circular path, part asphalt and part cobblestone, suitable for scootering, tricycling, etc.:

Age range:  Play equipment suitable for toddlers and younger children up to ages 6-8; for older children the park offers sufficient space to kick a ball around, dig for scorpions (if they're into that sort of thing), ride a scooter, or just hang out.

Snack factor: Unfortunately, there is no kiosk or grocery in the immediate vicinity (i.e., accessible without having to cross a street, or at least visible just across a street). However, there is a grocery around the corner on HaLamed-Heh Street, a fairly short walk away, as well as a bakery/cafe. A few blocks away, on HaPalmach St., there is a larger selection of stores and eateries (see the Beyond the park section below).

Schmooze factor: I use this park mainly in the afternoons, when I pick my kids up from the school across the street. The after-school hours are quite busy and fun here, with older Chorev kids stopping to play or cutting through the park on their way home ...

(somebody brought their hamster to school today)

 .. mothers picking up their younger schoolchildren and bringing preschool siblings and babies along for an outing ...

... or perhaps a picnic:

On school days you sometimes see classes of 30+ children from Chorev Elementary School charging into the park -- time off for good behavior ... On Friday mornings (a school morning, but also the start of the Israeli Friday-Shabbat weekend) the park is a popular spot for fathers with toddlers, giving their wives a break. On regular weekday mornings (Sunday through Thursday) the park usually gets some traffic -- the occasional mother-child or babysitter-child dyad, dog walkers, etc. However, Gan HaAgvaniya doesn't seem to especially attract metaplot (family-based childcare providers) with larger numbers of children in tow, perhaps because there is another, bigger park a couple of blocks down that also has swings, or possibly due to a problem with seating in the park's main play area, which I discuss below.

Seating: My one criticism of the park. Yes, there are plenty of benches along the tree-lined perimeter, and they provide delightfully shady seating on a hot summer's day. There is also a bench near the sandbox, and a funky seating area at the park's entrance:



In memory of Eliezer Karsani



The problem is that there are no benches near the park's central play area, where most of the equipment is located. 

The play area was renovated a couple of years ago. Formerly, it consisted of a small but sturdy and attractive wooden climbing/slide structure, a metal "car" installation with benches and steering wheels, and a spring toy or two. The equipment was situated within a sandbox, which itself was surrounded by a circular stone bench where mothers and other adults could sit and keep a close eye on the children playing there. When the play area was renovated (and I never could figure out why, as the previous set of equipment was perfectly adequate), the stone bench was removed and replaced with ... nothing that anyone, adult or child, could comfortably sit on.

Instead, the renovated play area was partly demarcated by a "decorative" but useless stone wall that is too high for a normal-sized adult woman to sit on in a dignified way:

You have to jump pretty high to get up on this thing, and then your legs dangle ...

If you look carefully, you can see that the wall is actually slanted in the wrong direction for anyone who might actually want to sit on it while facing the play area ... There are some benches not too far away, but the wall serves as a barrier between them and the play area, meaning that a mother/caregiver who wants to keep a close eye on children using the play equipment (and step in quickly to intervene where necessary) would not feel comfortable using the benches.

There is a problem in Jerusalem these days with excessive wall-building. I don't mean in a political sense (that's far beyond my purview), but in an urbanist sense. I point this out regarding another, brand-new playground that is effectively ruined by its surrounding wall, and regarding the city's newer residential construction. Just because it's made of Jerusalem stone doesn't mean it belongs there! There's more to urban design than putting up walls! 

Multiple uses within the park: Gan HaAgvaniya is definitely a mixed-use kind of place. It boasts:

Several different play areas that are distinct yet visible and easily accessible to each other (a plus for caregivers watching several children of varying ages);

Well-developed, multiple shrubbery areas where kids can interact with the natural world;

A circular path for scootering, etc.;

Some open lawn space:

Rocks and stones for climbing;



There is an adjacent empty lot (in Old Katamon! -- surely constituting some of the most valuable real estate on the planet) where more adventurous children can explore:

The park's immediate proximity to a school and a bus stop, and its relative proximity to some shopping areas, make it a pass-through place. Although it is bounded along much of the "tomato" perimeter by residential buildings, with a buffer of shrubbery and mature trees, this boundary is actually quite permeable. All the locals seem to know where the park border's unofficial "transit points" are, and utilize them as shortcuts.

Gan HaAgvaniya fits my mantra: a good park should be different things to different people, and different things to the same people on different occasions.

Beyond the park: Kovshei Katamon and HaLamed-Heh streets

Although I have reviewed three other playgrounds so far in the enchanted Old Katamon-German-Colony-Baka triangle, it is Gan HaAgvaniya and its surrounding streets that conjure up memories of my bitza past with a Proustian palpability. This is subjective, I know. I'm sure other Katamon refugees have their own involuntary-memory triggers.

As you leave Gan HaAgvaniya and head up Kovshei Katamon in the direction of HaLamed-Heh, you see some pretty typical Katamon architecture:

The above building is not an especially fancy one, just a normal stone-faced residential structure that exemplifies what life was like in Jerusalem before the current nightmare of minimum parking requirements. Note that there is indeed some parking space at ground level, under the building proper and directly in front of it. Note also, however, that the area in front of the building is left open, meaning that the structure's overall human scale remains intact. Yes, there's a car parked there, but there's also a bit of shrubbery; you can see the balconies and windows of the lower floors; if you pass by at night you have a reassuring sense of human activity in the area. This is in contrast to the snout houses that have become all the rage in Jerusalem over the last two decades -- buildings with large, enclosed garages that protrude from the building facades and create a sense of desolation at street level. A few of these devils appear a little farther up, when we turn the corner onto HaLamed-Heh Street. I will point them out to you, don't worry.

Another undistinguished, but human-scaled and therefore attractive apartment building:

The Kovshei-Katamon--HaLamed-Heh intersection:

The corner building is Yakar, the well-known synagogue and epicenter of my bitza memories. To point up the connection with Gan HaAgvaniya, I used to duck out from Yakar to the park on Yom Kippur for a catnap between mussaf and mincha -- the ten minutes or so that were left after the endlessly drawn-out (but beautifully harmonized!) davening. Now, I do like trees and shrubbery but I think they've gone a bit overboard. I'd like to see more building here.

Turning left onto HaLamed-Heh, one finds an interesting mixed-use street marked by attractive older architecture and, unfortunately, some terrible recent construction.

One lovely old building serves as a residence ...

... while its next-door neighbor houses a bank:

Kos Shel Bracha wine shop (I'll try to get another picture of the place sometime when it's open).

Below: the only store selling religious Jewish books on this side of town. Since they have a local monopoly, why do the proprietors of Havruta feel it's necessary to advertise themselves all over Jerusalem on those ugly municipal ad installations?

But it is a great store (though not very stroller-accessible), with a good children's section (including English books) and attractive Judaica:

Ah, here we come to it. The original Jerusalem snout houses, circa mid-1990s -- the start of a plague. The cavernous garage entrances, like giant yawns in the middle of an otherwise pleasant and human-scaled street:

The interesting and rather hopeful thing that characterizes this snout-house setup on HaLamed-Heh St. is that the garages alternate with commercial spaces: a minimarket and a branch of the Lechem Shel Tomer bakery/restaurant chain:

On the menu: "orange" soup, kumquat confiture (marmalade?), "outstanding" hamantaschen ...

Whether the minimarket and bakery/cafe occupy spaces that were originally planned for commercial use, or converted from garage spaces, I don't know. The minimarket guy hadn't been there long enough to tell me ... But the sight of this garage/commercial mix does give one hope that many of Jerusalem's snouthouses will someday be retrofitted for shops and restaurants, offices, small groundfloor apartments ... thereby creating viable streetscapes, rather than depressing garage-scapes.

Farther down the street there's another cafe and a greengrocer ... but the little one was getting impatient in her stroller. Also, she was filthy, having removed her shoes and socks (this in mid-February) for a more "feet-on" sandbox experience at Gan HaAgvaniya:

Bath time!