April 18, 1933
The Jerusalem YMCA holds a dedication ceremony for its new building in front of an overflow crowd. Gen. Edmund Allenby, whose forces defeated the Ottoman Empire in Palestine in World War I, delivers the keynote address. Allenby says the building “is a gesture of friendship by British and American citizens towards Moslems, Jews and their own Palestinian co-religionists, intended to and calculated to promote a better understanding of each other in the city which is holy to all three faiths.”
The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in 1844 in London by a group of men seeking “improvement of the spiritual condition of the young men engaged in houses of business, by the formation of Bible classes, family and social prayer meetings, mutual improvement societies, or any other spiritual agency.” Branches were created in other parts of England, and within a decade YMCAs are in many countries, leading to a global conference and the creation of an international headquarters in Geneva in 1855.
In 1878, the first Jerusalem branch of the YMCA opened in a bookstore; it relocated to its own facility near the Damascus Gate in 1909. During World War I, the Ottomans shut down the office over suspicions that it was being used to assist the Allies in the war. The British reopened the Jerusalem YMCA in 1920 to provide services for soldiers as well as the city’s residents. That same year, Dr. Archibald C. Harte, the YMCA international secretary for war aid, was appointed the general secretary of the Jerusalem branch.
Harte had a vision for a grand building that would enable the Jerusalem YMCA to expand its services. In 1924, he received a financial commitment of $1 million for the project from his friend James Newbegin Jarvie, a New Jersey financier known as the “Coffee King.”
The YMCA purchased land on St. Julian’s Way (now King David Street) from the Greek Orthodox Church. Ground was broken in 1926, and construction began in 1928. The building was designed by New York architect Arthur Loomis Harmon, whose firm, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, also designed the Empire State Building.
