From the margins to the center: urban housing for single Jewish women in pre-state Israel

From the mid-1920s on, single urban Jewish women in Palestine under the British Mandate (1920–1948) experienced a chronic shortage of suitable and affordable lodgings. This spurred Zionist women’s organizations to take action and solve the problem. Their cooperation led to building four ‘Women Pioneers’ Houses’, which offered single immigrant working women modern lodgings and vocational training. Women architects designed the buildings, keeping in mind their future women residents. The buildings’ architects, who had studied and worked in Europe before immigrating to Mandatory Palestine, applied modernist concepts to the buildings’ design. All the houses followed the highest contemporary standards of living and working environments. They became urban female hubs and notable socio-cultural forces in the city, eventually reaching beyond the female sphere, and offering the public at large a variety of activities. The houses had significant visibility and prominence in the urban landscape and were a source of pride for women.