Sha'arei Yerushalayim
Sha'arei Yerushalayim is a former courtyard neighborhood in western Jerusalem. It is one of a series of courtyard neighborhoods built along Jaffa Road in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, together with Ohel Shlomo and Batei Saidoff. Today it is considered part of the Mekor Baruch neighborhood.
Location
The neighborhood is bounded by Jaffa Road to the south, Tashbetz Street to the west, Rashi Street to the north, and HaTurim Street to the east.Name
Sha'arei Yerushalayim was so-named because at the time of its founding, it was the closest neighborhood to the entrance to the city. It was popularly known as "Abu Bessel" in honor of its founder, Yitzchak Lipkin, who also dealt in vegetables and supplied onions to other vegetable dealers.History
Sha'arei Yerushalayim was established in 1891 by Yitzchak Lipkin, a Russian Jewish immigrant businessman. Lipkin opposed the halukka system of welfare handouts, encouraging Jerusalem residents to support themselves by their own labor. To that end, he provided financing for the Sha'arei Yerushalayim and Ohel Shlomo neighborhoods on the northern side of Jaffa Road, and sold houses to individuals with easy payment terms.Slated to accommodate approximately 40 homes, Sha'arei Yerushalayim was designed as an "open courtyard" with one- and two-story buildings on all four sides and access ways between them. Two reservoirs stood in the middle of the courtyard to collect rainwater during the winter; the water was apportioned to each family in the summertime. By 1892, 43 homes had been completed. In a 1916 census conducted by the office of the Histadrut, the number of homes in Sha'arei Yerushalayim was listed as 44, with a total of 187 occupants.
In its early years, the neighborhood was considered very beautiful. Homes were rented to Jewish families and many important people lived there. Within a decade of its establishment, two major public institutions opened in close proximity: the Sha'arei Zedek Hospital directly across the street in 1902, and the Sephardic Old Age Home for Men and Women further west on Jaffa Road in 1904.
The first Jerusalem bus station was established on an open field opposite Sha'arei Yerushalayim in 1931. Buses of the HaMekasher and Egged bus cooperatives operated out of a garage at this site until 1939, when the station was moved to a larger site in Kiryat Moshe.
In the census of 1938 conducted by the Vaad HaKehillah, the population of Sha'arei Yerushalayim was recorded as 400 residents, mostly Sephardi Jews. In the latter part of the 20th century, some of the one-story homes in Sha'arei Yerushalayim were converted into workshops and yeshiva classrooms.