"All USJ alumni will have at least one home in Lebanon. "

“La Maison de l’Ancien” is the dream of all USJ Alumni. A dream come true since the renovation works started in the fall of 2019 and the inauguration planned for 2021.

“La Maison de l'Ancien” will be located in the Corm building, an architectural heritage in the heart of Beirut, a space steeped in history, creativity, poetry and culture.

It will be a meeting, exchange and conviviality center for all USJ alumni and for the Corm foundation; a 5-star socio-cultural center, open to all alumni, their families and friends.

The House will offer high-level infrastructure and will include administrative offices, meeting rooms, a multi-function room, a lounge, a café-restaurant  and gardens.

It will be the administrative center of the Federation and the Associations. This will allow an optimization of the working dynamics of the associations, committees and commissions, grouped under one roof with the aim of consolidating their strengths and efforts in order to offer the best services USJ Alumni.

100,000 Alumni will now have a house, a symbol of their union and their solidarity.

A roof that symbolises the spirit of USJ.

History of Maison Corm

The history of “La Maison de l’Ancien” is closely linked with the Corm family and Charles Corm, businessmen, poet and author.

In 1912, after graduating at the age of 18, Charles Corm went to New York where he rented a small office on Wall Street to carry on an import-export activity. Shortly after, Charles Corm met the business magnate Henry Ford, the wealthiest man in the world at the time. After the meeting, Corm obtained the Ford Motor Company concession for the entire Middle East region. The Charles Corm and Co. business empire became the first and largest multinational in the Middle East, employing thousands of men and women from Turkey to Iran. The company contributed to the development of infrastructure and networks of roads, railways and bridges in countries that had not yet emerged.

In 1928, Charles Corm designed the headquarters of Ford Motor Company in the Middle East, which would later be named The Corm Building and Gardens. The building was erected in 1929 in Beirut, and later became the home of the Corm family. It was the first skyscraper in the Middle East and the tallest structure in Lebanon until 1967. Reflecting the ecological instincts of Charles Corm, the 14,000 m² building gardens (the largest private gardens in Beirut) contain a variety of artistic and archaeological relics as well as exotic trees and rare plants.