Aftimus was born at Deir el Qamar in Mount Lebanon, took a Bachelor of Arts at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, sailed for New York in 1885 and graduated in civil engineering from Union College in 1891. He worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad and for General Electric before being chosen in 1893 to design the Persian Palace, Turkish Village and Cairo Street pavilions at Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition. Recruited home as Beirut's municipal engineer in 1898, he spent three decades giving the city its public face: the Grand Serail clock tower, the Hamidiyyeh Fountain of 1900, the Beirut Municipality building he won in competition in 1923, the Barakat house of 1924 and the Grand Théâtre of 1929. He served as minister of public works in 1926–27 and published on Arab architecture.
