Juliet Marais Louw

If you walk down 11th Street in Parkmore, a short distance from the Sandton CBD, you may see some bright orange signage announcing 'Saks's Corner 1949'. Considering Sandton City was only built in the early 1970s there is certainly a story to be told. The following piece was written by Juliet Marais Louw in 1982 and reveals the history behind one of Sandton's oldest shops. Unfortunately the original structure has been demolished but the memory of the famous landmark lives on.

On the corner of 11th Street and Elizabeth Avenue in Parkmore, stands the well-known landmark of Saks’s Corner with the date 1949 on the wall outside.

Old photo of Saks's Corner (Sandton Archives)

Who was Saks and where did he come from? Harry Saks was born in Saville, Lithuania in 1911. When he was thirteen he went to live in Israel and then in Palestine where he stayed for several years. He led an exciting life there working as a guard on a farmer’s land where he dressed as an Arab to fool the thieves and snipers who roamed around and were a constant menace. He also worked as a photographer and slept on a roof-top at night. He had to pay the owner of the house 50 cents a month for his bed and when he left for South Africa...

Just a few hundred metres from the Sandton Gautrain Station is a little piece of history... the 'Little Church in the Pines', one of Sandton's oldest buildings. Below are a few passages outlining the Church's history taken from the 1992 Sandton Historical Association magazine. The author? None other than the legendary Juliet Marais Louw...

"The little church is still there in Stella Street, Sandown, its story begins with that colourful personality, Sytze Wierda who came from Friesland in Holland in 1887 to organise the Public Works Department for President Kruger. With Sytze Wierda came his wife, Hermina, and his four daughters, Nellie who was twenty at the time, Hendrika, fifteen, Anna, twelve and Suse, eight.

Mr Wierda was an architect who had designed the Central Railway Station in Amsterdam, among other work. For the Kruger government he planned the Raadzaal and the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, the Paardekraal Monument, Johannesburg's Rissik Street Post Office and the old post offices in Braamfontein and Jeppe, also the Marshall Square buildings, the bridge over the Olifants River, Wierda Bridge over Ses-Myl-Spruit on the Pretoria Road (the railings have been incorporated into the gates to Rivonia Primary School), the forts of Klapperkop and Schanskop in Pretoria and the Johannesburg Fort. In addition he surveyed the Delagoa Bay railway line. His salary was £500 a year.

Nellie Wierda married Charles Ferdinand Obermeyer who had come from Holland in 1882. He chose to become a most skillful cabinet-maker and later a builder and contractor. During the...