Americans Imagining Jerusalem: The Jerusalem YMCA Building

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler

Published:

2020

Publisher:

Edinburgh University Press

Chapter three discusses the Jerusalem YMCA building, designed by American architect Arthur Loomis Harmon (1878-1958). Built by a Christian organization, it was assigned an important role within the Christian community, but also provided a venue of modern culture for all of the city’s inhabitants. Intercommunal engagement in this project was more significant than in the Archaeological Museum, and the project’s executives revealed profound concern for the building’s acceptance among Jerusalem’s publics. The building’s explicit multicultural and interreligious design and sculpture were achieved by an articulation of local sources of inspiration, merged with American and European architecture. This unique hybridity contained an obfuscated message of Christian hegemony, which asserted American cultural authority that extended beyond the building’s modern functions.

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