Hadar HaCarmel (lit. “Splendor of the Carmel” or simply known as the neighbourhood of Hadar) is a district of Haifa, Israel. Located on the northern slope of Mount Carmel between the upper and lower city overlooking the Port of Haifa and Haifa Bay, it was once the commercial center of Haifa.
Hadar HaCarmel was founded before World War I. Shmuel Pevzner was one of the founders of the neighborhood and head of its development committee in 1922-1927. By 1944, most of Haifa’s 66,000 Jewish residents lived in the district. Haifa’s city hall, courthouse and government buildings were located in Hadar, but relocated to the lower city (Downtown) in the turn of the 21st century.
Hadar has historically been characterized as a Jewish immigrant neighbourhood with many Holocaust survivors settled in the area, and in the early 1990s when many newcomers from the former Soviet Union were first absorbed there.
The Technion was established in Hadar, and was located there until the new Kiryat HaTechnion (“Technion City”) campus was inaugurated in Nave Sha’anan in the late 1970s. The old historic building, dating from 1912, is now a hands-on science museum, the Israel National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space. The Carmelit, Israel’s only subway, runs from Carmel Center to Downtown’s Paris Square via Hadar HaCarmel, and three of the line’s six stations are located in the district. The neighborhood has many Bauhaus buildings designed by German-Jewish architects who settled in Mandatory Palestine after fleeing the Nazis. Hadar is close to Downtown’s Wadi Nisnas landmarks, such as Beit HaGefen, an Arab–Jewish cultural center and AlMeidan Arab-language Theater.
