Romema was founded on a hill outside the historical city of Lifta in 1921. The initiator of the project was attorney Yom-Tov Hamon, an expert in Ottoman law and land-ownership issues, who arbitrated disputes among Arab landowners in the region and opened sales of the land to Jews. The original building plan called for 24 houses surrounding a central square. The Jewish section of the neighborhood was built with private funding. Most of the original streets were named for Hebrew newspapers of the era: "HaZvi", edited by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, "Ariel", "HaOr", "Torah Mitzion", and "Moriah". In 1931 a water reservoir was erected here.