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* Gunneweg and Kalfon Home Design in Jerusalem *

Our Jerusalem Home from East to West, before 2003, after 2003

This page concerns our home located in Jerusalem's prestigious quarter of Yemin Moshe near the famous windmill, overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem and its environs.

We are no architects, though like architecture. We became the architect of our house, designed it, built it and decorated the interior.

For example, Jan drew and submitted the plans to the Municipality of Jerusalem, planned the electricity, dug a cellar in bedrock with his bear hands and carved the wooden doors with decorative motifs. Meanwhile Hanna cleaned every rooftile of the old building, peeled the walls from twenty layers of overlying paint and designed the interior with its 60 colorsful cushions that are dispersed in the house. New curtains are made on a yearly basis.

Our Home near the Yemin Moshe Windmill

Winter and Summer at the Windmill
Snapshots of the House's Interior

A View of the Kitchen

The Kitchen has two windows overlooking the South where the windmill is situated, whereas from a third window one has a view on Mount Zion, adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem.
The kitchen table is of a massive wooden top placed on a white washed concrete-block wall, accompanied by two wooden benches with pegs to hold the legs and upper plank together.

The counter is made of slabs of greyish marble, whereas the doors for the cabinets were modeled from massive wooden Spanish doors which were cut up in order to serve their purpose of kitchen cabinet doors. Since the cabinet's legth supersedes the amount of doors at our disposal, I added two units of drawers of different design.

Kitchen table with a glimps into the Livingroom and a view of the renewed kitchen
Two steps lead into the kitchen area. Both kitchen and living room are a large open space and are build in the form of the letter "L".

The floor of the kitchen is made of natural stone slabs which were brought in from the Judean Hills near Ramot to the west of Jerusalem. The stone slabs of the rest of the kitchen came from the famous Ramallah Quarries, red-buff of color.
The floor tiles which were used for the livingroom are the famous "Mizzi Yehudi" stone slabs, the hardest stones quarried in Jerusalem itself during the 19th century. In ancient times, every single home in Jerusalem had these stones as floor. By the frequent use of water to clean the floor, the stones blistered and about 40 years ago most of the floors in Jerusalem were covered with modern tiles. When we dug in the room which serves us today as bedroom, an entire floor of Mizzi Yehudi stones was found which I took to the living, balcony, entrance and patio downstairs. This served the purpose of making the entire floor upstairs into one unit.

Wood-carving is one of our hobbies and therefore appear on many of the ancient doors that are carved and painted. The motifs are taken from Moroccan Art. The painting consists of overlaying layers of paint which have been partially removed by grinding and scraping. The dominant colors of the kitchen are brown, beige and orange, accentuate by black and sometimes yellow and red, earthy colors which gives the kitchen a rustic look.

A closed fire place with glass windows at three sides was installed instead of the previous large flower pot.

Drawer Chest with Crystal Mirror
A massive Spanish door gives entrance to the master bed room. The original width of the walls of this room--back in the last century--was a yard (90 cm.), a feature which is a good insulation. In the 19th century, these walls were build of two row of stones--smooth at the outer side, but rough at the inside- -, leaving a space in between which was then filled up with clay and wet mud.
During the summer, the balcony door is opened and the natural breeze is enough to keep the house cooled. During the winter, the width of the walls offer plenty insulation to keep the warmth inside.

The bedroom leads to the western balcony. The Bedroom has two windows with iron bars at the outside--a feature which reflects the defense against intruders in the 19th century--as well as wooden shutters designed to keep out the rain which during the winter months batters the western wall.

The wardrobes are set against existing niches and made of the old wooden cupboard doors as found when we entered our ruin in 1974. In order to have some drawers beneath the Wardrobes, we removed the upper set of the Drawer-Chest and placed it beneath the wardrobe.

The Chest itself is covered by a marble slab.
The bed head piece has been taken from a couch and adjusted against the wall giving the impression to be an integral part of the bed itself. We, actually, created every piece in our home like this by taking something existing, changing it and adding to it something else whereas giving it an entire different purpose. By so doing, every item one observes is unique.

A "White Dream" Loft
The Loft was specially designed to give Hanna a white background for her creative activities in the making of her clothes. For that purpose, a mannequin was bought in Fustat, the Old City of Cairo. At the border, the police frowned their eyebrows of what we were going to do with a violincello (the mannequin was wrapped in paper) until we told them that it couldn't make any music. The Loft is also used by our guests. At the right side, a piece of the original wall has been preserved.
The Loft has a rectangular, a triangular and a round window. The Loft is situated straight beneath a 10 cms. thick concrete roof. However, a wooden structure build on top of the concrete slab and 18 cms elevated, holds the roof tiles. Thus, an air cushion is created between the roof tiles and the concrete slab serving as isolation against heat and cold.

Damascus-style Couche under the staircase to the Loft
Previously, we has under the Staircase leading to the Loft a Damascus-style couche in its full glory. It has a red pluche cover, and a mother-of-pearl inlay into separated panels and wooden bar work. Left of that is the music corner.

Snapshots of the outside of the House

View through the living room towards the west

The color of the ceiling and that of the plastered walls is off-white. The door in the photograph gives access to the eastern balcony which, in turn, looks out onto Mount Zion, the walls of Jedrusalem's Old City and the Judaean Desert.

The apartment was originally built 116 years ago by Sir Mozes Montefiori, although with the money of Mr. Turah from Newport (where the first Portugese synagogue was built in the USA.) Today, there are 120 apartments in Yemin Moshe and it is central to the Mamilla shopping centre, the Khan theatre, the Jerusalem Theatre and the renewed Cinemateque. The neighborhood is quiet since there is no motor traffic in Yemin Moshe. In short, it is a cosy place to be.

The ruin as we bought it in 1974 and how it looks today.

Yemin Moshe is called after Sir Moses Montefiore, an English philantropist who with his Dutch-born wife Judith Cohen from Amsterdam was the first to build a Hospice and a windmill for the Jews outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The building started in 1854 and was completed in 1865.
Fifteen years later, Montefiore bought with the heritage money of Judah Turah a piece of land towards the North of the Montefiore hospice that was ready in 1890. Judah's father a Dutch Jew from Amsterdam had started to build in 1758 a synagogue at Newport that bears his name-American Touro Synagogue instead of Hebrew Turah). The synagogue was ready in 1763. Judah was born and buried at New Port (1775-1854)in Rhode Island).
Our home is located at the highest row of the quarter near to the windmill. The streets of Yemin Moshe are paved with roughly cut stones and are without any motor traffic. The quarter is build on a slope which extends from King David street (famous for its King David-, Sheraton-and Inbal hotels and the YMCA) to the Sultan's Pool which today can be (and often is) converted into an open-air theatre where during the summer many cultural festivities take place.

The original gate in Windmill Street preserved from 1892
The streets, five in number, run north-south, at equal distances cut by three west-east staircases of roughly 180 steps. After 100 years, the quarter which once was No-men's Land between 1948-1967 (Six Day War) deteriorated quickly as can be seen in the photograph above.
In 1968, it was decided to restore the "spirit" of this quarter and private people submitted plans to restore the putchased ruins. A committee was formed to overlook the submitted plans.

Yemin Moshe, the Old City and the Hebrew University on the background
Our house is the higher one, left of the windmill. In West-East direction, Yemin Moshe is higher than the Old City, but 50-100 meters lower than Mount Scopus on which resides the Hebrew University with its three faculties of the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Law, as seen in the photograph above.
The walls of the Old City, as seen in the photo above, are from the time of Suleiman the Magnificent who built them in 1635.

A View over Yemin Moshe

At the highest level, there is a parking place, one of the four, surrounding the quarter. Within the quarter, one goes by foot.

All lines of electricity, water, TV, gas and telephone are underground so that they don't disturb the view or the stone and green features for which Yemin Moshe is so famous. TV antennas are forbidden. The quarter has a central antenna as well as Cable TV for one who wishes to be connected.

Birds of all kind have made Yemin Moshe their haven, so have the cats in the trail of the birds.

Our Home has three floors, two at the west side, whereas three at the East (being built on the slope of the hill). A Loft on the third floor crowns it all.
The house is made of stone (Mizzi Ahmar) cut diagonally by means of a chisel. All window frames and doors from the second floor upward are of made of wood.
Iron is used for the ballustrade of the outside staircase and that of the two balconies as well for the shutters at the lower western floor.

A View from our balcony towards the windmill

The windmill was designed by an Englishman and had the purpose of grinding wheat for the population of the early Jewish hospice in 1865. The jews had to be paid to come to work and live in the Hospice because in those days one was afraid to live outside the protection of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. However, The upper part of the windmill did not turn towards the wind and soon, the mill was unusable. The story goes that the mill-stones made of basalt were rolled from Gaza to Jerusalem over the main road because they were too heavy to be caried.
At the west side of our home, we can see the beautiful gardens which were designed to encircle the entire Old City of Jerusalem with a green belt which would take care that the Old City does not disappear between highrise (Take, for example, the case of the "disappearance" of St. Paul's Cathedral in New York).

The Dormition church and Mount Zion opposite our balcony

The owners and planners

Hanna Kalfon-Gunneweg studied Arts--Interior Design--in the Art Academy of Bezalel in Jerusalem. After completion, she moved to Paris where she studied Costume Design and Make-Up. Please, have a look at Hanna Kalfon Homepage.

Jan Gunneweg is an Archaeologist/Archaeometrist and is interested in almost everything. He can be found on Jan Gunneweg's Homepage

Owners: Mrs. Hanna Kalfon and Dr. Jan Gunneweg
7 Hatachana Street
Yemin Moshe
94110, Jerusalem, Israel
Tel/Fax: 972-2-6234830 or 972-5-7984020 (Hanna)

Jan Gunneweg

Web design, Jan Gunneweg, Hebrew University-All rights reserved. February 1995-2007