The first home to be erected on what would become known as Shmuel HaNavi Street was the Mandelbaum House, a large, three-story house built by Simcha Torever-Mandelbaum, a Jerusalem textile merchant, in 1927. Mandelbaum chose the location at the eastern end of the street, facing Sheikh Jarrah, with a desire to expand the northern boundary of Jewish Jerusalem at that time. In 1941, the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, initially a small children's zoo on Harav Kook Street in central Jerusalem, was moved to a tract at the eastern end of Shmuel HaNavi Street before relocating to the campus of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in 1947. Houses built at the eastern end of the street before 1948 were largely inhabited by poor families and subject to sniper fire from Sheik Jarrah during the 1947 civil war. When war broke out in 1948, Shmuel HaNavi Street became a strategic gateway for Arab Legionnaires seeking to enter Jewish Jerusalem. The Mandelbaum House was used by the Haganah as a military stronghold and was partially blown up by the Arab Legion.