Frutiger

• Johannes Frutiger, a Swiss Protestant, came to Jerusalem in 1858, working for a trading company. A bank he helped found became the largest bank in the Ottoman province and financed the railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem.
• Along with Joseph Navon and Shalom Konstrum he is credited with financing the building of the Mahaneh Yehuda Neighborhood after which the shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html ) is named.
• The 40-room house that Frutiger build for his family (he and his wife had 14 children) later became rental property. Menachem Ussishkin (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/jerusalem-street-poetry.html ) was a tenant when the 1926 earthquake damaged the Augusta Victoria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Victoria ) building where the British High Commisioner (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/palmanda.htm )lived. The British expropriated the building for their man until Armon HaNatziv was built for him (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/haas-and-goldman-promenades.html ).
• The Frutiger house is called Beit Mahanaim. It now houses part of the Ministry of Education. It is on the corner of Shivtei Yisrael and Rehov HaNeviim (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ). It was the first stop on the 2.75 hour walking tour of three blocks along the Street of the Prophets.
  Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox