Beirut, Lebanon - In 1963, 19-year-old Salim Daouk climbed 10 flights of stairs to check out the skeleton of a luxury apartment in a building he had heard a lot about. Smitten, he told his parents they had to buy it. The Yacoubian Building has stolen hearts for more than 60 years since, Beirutis loving its place on their Corniche, and its tenants never wanting to leave.
Here are some of their odes to the Yacoubian. The pride of Caracas The elevators had not been installed yet in Block A of the Yacoubian Building, but Yacoub Yacoubian’s “building like no other” made it up with a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean from the balcony of Salim's future home. Around the same time, Greek UN employee Eleftherios Nohos had Beirut, where his family was living, on his mind while working in western Pakistan.
On July 5, 1964, he wrote to Yacoub telling him he wanted to buy a one-bedroom apartment. Wintering in Beirut and summering in Greece was his dream. Designed by Rafiq Moheb, the Yacoubian Building rose from the top of a hill in Beirut’s Caracas neighbourhood as the 1960s dawned on a bustling Beirut, and from the imagination of its owner who wanted to give the city something it had never seen before.
Today, buildings have risen to block Salim’s view - he can see his beloved Mediterranean but doesn’t have a line of sight from Raouche down to Jounieh like he used to. The building is no longer surrounded by cactus and green allotment plots teeming with people's mini-crops..
