A Viraluxe Historical Real Estate Documentary
Narrator:
The twentieth century arrives in Beirut.
To the west of the old city, Ras Beirut still carries the appearance of the countryside.
There are gardens.
There are orchards.
There are fields divided among families.
Stone houses rise among cultivated plots.
And the Mediterranean remains visible across large expanses of undeveloped land.
But something fundamental has changed.
The Syrian Protestant College—later the American University of Beirut—is firmly established on the hill overlooking the sea.
Beirut is expanding.
Transportation is improving.
New roads are beginning to define the landscape.
And the agricultural land surrounding the college is acquiring another kind of value.
It is becoming urban property.
This is the second chapter in the story of Hamra.
Chapter One — Ras Beirut in 1900
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ras Beirut was still predominantly low-density and semi-rural.
The transformation described in Part I was incomplete.
Farmhouses, gardens, orchards and agricultural holdings remained important components of the landscape. Historical research on Hamra describes its early urbanization as emerging from precisely this environment: extensive cultivated land, gardens and traditional flat farmhouses. (AUB ScholarWorks)
But Beirut was moving toward Ras Beirut.
And Ras Beirut was moving toward Beirut.
Between them, the boundary separating city from countryside was beginning to disappear.
For property owners, this represented a profound change.
A field that had previously been valued principally according to its agricultural productivity now possessed another possibility:
development.
Chapter Two — The University Becomes an Urban Anchor
The Syrian Protestant College had already transformed part of Ras Beirut during the nineteenth century.
By the early twentieth century, its influence was becoming increasingly visible outside its gates.
Faculty members had constructed suburban residences in the surrounding area, including two- and three-storey houses. The relationship between the institution and its neighborhood subsequently became one of the defining forces in Ras Beirut’s urban evolution. (AUB ScholarWorks)
Think about what this meant for surrounding property.
A university generates permanent demand.
Professors need homes.
Students need accommodation.
Doctors and medical personnel need residences.
Employees need transportation.
Visitors require services.
Families want proximity to education.
Businesses eventually follow them.
AUB therefore functioned not merely as an educational institution.
From an urban-development perspective, it became an anchor institution around which land use progressively intensified.
Chapter Three — 1908: The Tramway Arrives
Then came one of the most important developments in Beirut’s transportation history.
The electric tramway.
In 1908, a Belgian company backed by Ottoman and Belgian capital obtained the concession for Beirut’s electric tramway.
One of its principal routes connected Furn el-Chebbak, Bab Idriss, the American University area, Ras Beirut and Manara. (Lebanese Army)
For Ras Beirut property, transportation changed the equation.
Before modern transport, distance imposed a penalty on land.
A property might be physically attractive but commercially limited if reaching central Beirut required a difficult journey.
The tram reduced that isolation.
Workers could travel.
Students could travel.
Customers could travel.
Residents could live farther from the traditional city center.
The western suburbs became more accessible. And accessibility is one of the fundamental components of real-estate value.
Chapter Four — When Transportation Creates Property Value
Imagine two parcels of agricultural land in 1900.
Both have similar dimensions.
Both have fertile soil.
Both contain perhaps a farmhouse and several trees.
But twenty years later, one parcel sits beside an increasingly important transportation route.
The other remains difficult to reach.
Their future economic possibilities are no longer equal.
The first property can potentially accommodate residences.
Later, perhaps shops.
Perhaps offices.
Perhaps apartments.
Perhaps a hotel.
Transportation therefore changes not merely how people move.
It changes what land can become.
The Beirut tramway provides an early illustration of this process.
Contemporary historical accounts note that hospitals, schools, universities, cinemas, cafés, commercial markets and public institutions increasingly developed in relation to tram routes. (Lebanese Army)
The tram did not create Hamra by itself.
But it helped integrate Ras Beirut into the economic geography of the city.
Chapter Five — 1919: A Street Pattern Begins to Appear
Now move forward to 1919.
Historical mapping of Hamra presents a district still sparsely occupied because much of it remained farmland. (American University of Beirut)
But look carefully at the map.
Something new is happening.
The land is beginning to acquire an urban geometry.
Roads.
Parcels.
Building plots.
Connections.
Researchers studying Ras Beirut’s development have shown that streets including Abdul Aziz, Jeanne d’Arc, Sadat and Hamra developed in relation to the AUB campus, frequently running parallel or perpendicular to its boundaries. (AUB ScholarWorks)
This is a critical moment in property history.
Because once streets become established, land begins to acquire something that agricultural property does not necessarily possess:
street frontage.
And street frontage changes economics.
Chapter Six — From Agricultural Parcel to Building Plot
Consider a large family-owned field.
As agricultural land, it functions as one economic unit.
But urbanization introduces another possibility.
A road can divide the property.
Smaller parcels can be created.
Each parcel may acquire access.
Each may support a residence.
Later, each may support a larger building.
The economic logic of ownership begins to change.
The question is no longer simply:
“What can this land produce?”
It increasingly becomes:
“What can be built on this land?”
That question would eventually transform Hamra completely.
Chapter Seven — The French Mandate and the New Urban Geography
After the First World War and the end of Ottoman rule, Beirut entered the French Mandate period.
The city continued to expand.
Maps produced during the Mandate reveal the growing definition of Ras Beirut’s streets.
Between approximately 1920 and 1938, Hamra Street, Abdul Aziz Street, Jeanne d’Arc Street and Sadat Street became increasingly clearly demarcated within the urban fabric. (AUB ScholarWorks)
Compare this landscape with Ras Beirut only a few decades earlier.
The difference is dramatic.
Where there had once been paths crossing agricultural holdings, there was now an increasingly organized network of streets.
Where land had once been primarily productive acreage, it was increasingly becoming divisible urban property.
The future Hamra was beginning to acquire its skeleton.
Chapter Eight — Hamra’s First Real Urbanization: 1920–1940
Research into Hamra identifies 1920–1940 as the period of its first significant urbanization.
But this early Hamra was primarily residential.
It was not yet the famous commercial street remembered from the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.
The landscape still contained substantial gardens, groves and agricultural plots.
Traditional flat farmhouses remained.
But another property type increasingly appeared:
the suburban villa. (AUB ScholarWorks)
The transition was underway.
Farm.
Farmhouse.
Villa.
Apartment building.
Commercial building.
The sequence would take decades to complete, but by the 1920s it was unmistakably in motion.
Chapter Nine — The Villa Era
The villa represented more than architectural fashion.
It represented a new relationship between wealth and land.
A farm uses most of its property for production.
A villa uses land differently.
The house itself becomes the centerpiece.
Gardens provide privacy and status rather than primarily agricultural income.
Road frontage becomes important.
Views become valuable.
Proximity to institutions matters.
Architecture becomes an expression of social position.
Research into Ras Beirut describes suburban residences of two or three storeys, frequently constructed from sandstone and characterized by red-tiled roofs. (AUB ScholarWorks)
These houses created the architectural bridge between rural Hamra and urban Hamra.
Chapter Ten — The Old Landowning Families
Behind this transformation stood the owners of the land.
Research into Hamra’s agricultural period identifies holdings associated with long-established families including Itani, Nsouli, Rawda, Talhouk, Sourati and Tarazi, among others. (AUB ScholarWorks)
As urbanization progressed, such agricultural holdings confronted new possibilities.
A family could continue cultivating.
It could build.
It could divide land among heirs.
It could sell portions.
It could develop residences.
And, as land values changed, inherited agricultural property could become increasingly important urban capital.
This process is fundamental to understanding Hamra’s real-estate history.
The city did not simply arrive on empty land.
The city was constructed over an existing landscape of ownership.
Every new road crossed or bordered someone’s property.
Every new building occupied a parcel with a history.
Every subdivision transformed an earlier holding.
Chapter Eleven — The 1928–1930 Cadastral Landscape
By 1928–1930, cadastral mapping provides a much clearer picture of Hamra’s evolving property structure.
Historical cadastral plans preserved and studied through AUB research document parcels, streets and buildings with considerably greater definition than earlier maps. (AUB ScholarWorks)
This represents an important stage in the history of real estate.
The landscape is becoming measurable.
Parcels have boundaries.
Roads define frontage.
Buildings occupy identifiable lots.
Ownership becomes connected to increasingly formalized urban geography.
Hamra is no longer merely a place.
It is becoming a property system.
Chapter Twelve — Agricultural Value Versus Urban Value
This period introduced a crucial economic transition.
Suppose one dunum of land could produce crops.
Its agricultural value could be estimated partly through expected production.
But once that same dunum lies beside a developing road, near a university and within an expanding city, agricultural income may cease to represent its highest economic potential.
The land now possesses:
location value.
Its value increasingly derives from proximity.
Proximity to AUB.
Proximity to transportation.
Proximity to Beirut.
Proximity to emerging residential communities.
Proximity to future commercial activity.
This is the moment when land becomes something more than soil.
It becomes urban capital.
Chapter Thirteen — Concrete Changes the Equation
Another technological development began changing the economics of property during the 1930s:
reinforced concrete construction.
Earlier houses had generally been low-rise.
But concrete permitted larger and taller structures.
Research on Hamra’s development records the increasing height of construction following the introduction of concrete during the 1930s; elevators would subsequently allow even greater vertical development from the late 1940s onward. (AUB ScholarWorks)
This created a fundamental real-estate principle that would dominate Hamra’s later history:
land could now generate value vertically.
A parcel was no longer limited to a farmhouse or villa.
The same ground area could eventually accommodate multiple floors.
Multiple apartments.
Multiple households.
Multiple rents.
And eventually multiple commercial uses.
The economics of land were changing permanently.
Chapter Fourteen — Between Bliss and Hamra
By the late 1930s and into the 1940s, development increasingly concentrated in the zone between Bliss Street and Hamra Street. (AUB ScholarWorks)
This geographical relationship was critical.
Bliss benefited directly from its relationship with the university.
Hamra, running roughly parallel farther south, possessed room for development.
Between them lay residential properties, gardens and increasingly valuable building plots.
A recognizable urban district was emerging.
The university remained the institutional anchor.
Bliss developed as an immediate university-facing corridor.
Hamra was beginning to develop its own identity.
But its great commercial transformation had not yet arrived.
Chapter Fifteen — 1945: Hamra Stands at the Threshold
Now imagine Hamra around 1945.
The transformation is visible.
The fields have not disappeared completely.
Gardens survive.
Villas remain important.
Farmhouses can still be found.
But the street network has become established.
Residential construction has increased.
Concrete is changing building possibilities.
The university has expanded.
Transportation links Ras Beirut with the wider city.
The land has been subdivided and increasingly urbanized.
Historical mapping assembled by AUB’s Neighborhood Initiative specifically traces Ras Beirut across 1876, 1920, 1959 and 2004, illustrating the extraordinary progression from a lightly built landscape toward dense urbanization. (American University of Beirut)
By 1945, Hamra possesses nearly all the ingredients required for its next transformation.
What it needs now is an economic explosion.
That explosion is coming.
Final Scene — The Street Is Ready
Narrator:
Forty-five years have passed since the beginning of the century.
The farmer walking through Ras Beirut in 1900 would still recognize parts of the landscape.
But he would also see something unfamiliar.
Roads now cross former agricultural holdings.
Villas stand beside gardens.
The tram carries passengers through Ras Beirut.
Students move through the neighborhood.
Land once valued for vegetables, vines and mulberry trees is increasingly measured according to frontage, accessibility and development potential.
The transformation is not complete.
Hamra is not yet the legendary street of cafés, cinemas, hotels, bookstores and intellectual life.
That Hamra belongs to the next chapter.
But by 1945, its foundations have been laid.
The university provided an anchor.
Transportation provided accessibility.
Roads provided structure.
Subdivision created building plots.
Concrete provided density.
Population created demand.
And land provided the stage upon which everything else would happen.
The agricultural landscape described in Part I has become an emerging urban district.
The next transformation will be faster.
More profitable.
More architectural.
More commercial.
And far more dramatic.
Because after the Second World War, Hamra will cease to be merely a developing residential neighborhood.
It will begin its journey toward becoming one of the most famous streets in the Arab world.Part III: Hamra’s Golden Age — 1945–1975.