Kathy Munro

We have heard that the blue plaque at Temple Israel, Paul Nel Street Hillbrow has been destroyed. However the good news is that we have heard from Eric Itzkin at the City of Johannesburg will be replacing this blue plaque as part of its restoration budget. 

Temple Israel (The Heritage Portal)

Wanton destruction of a blue plaque is the work of ignorant iconoclasts and is to be deplored. A blue plaque celebrates, commemorates, informs, educates and explains. A blue plaque tells a great story of a place, event or a heritage building. Blue plaques in Johannesburg tell a remarkable story of a young city with a rich, diverse, complex and controversial history. We celebrate our ancient origins in blue plaques (the Melville Koppies and Cave), our Johannesburg original town plan within Randjeslaagte and our ridges (the Munro drive). We share our earliest and quirkiest of buildings (the Fort and the Berea Dolls House fire station are examples). We celebrate education for all (Jeppe Girls, Forest High, Orlando High school).

The Old Fort (The Heritage Portal)

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Clive Chipkin passed away peacefully on January 10th 2021 in Johannesburg, aged 91. Clive was born on 21st March 1929 in Johannesburg, the city he made his own. He was an extraordinary person who lived a rich and full life and meant much to friends and colleagues in the heritage and architecture communities.

2013 Award of an Honorary D Arch

In 2013 his alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand, recognized his scholarship with the award of an Honorary PhD. His books Johannesburg Style: Architecture and Society 1880s to 1960s (David Philip, Cape Town, 1993) and Johannesburg Transition: Architecture and Society from 1950 (STE Publishers, 2009) are seminal monographs which made his name. They represent a lifetime of research, extraordinary knowledge and critical analysis.

Clive Chipkin leading a tour of the Ridges of Johannesburg for r Brown University students in 2018 (Kathy Munro ) 

The Importance of  Chipkin’s Two volumes on Johannesburg

Johannesburg Style quickly achieved iconic status and is regarded as a work of great distinction. Eric Itzkin describes it as a work of genius. The title, Johannesburg Style was meant to signify that Johannesburg has a characteristic way of doing things. Clive dissected how the colonial capitalist city with an entrepreneurial culture evolved – this was...

On a recent visit to the Resource Centre of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation at the Holy Family College, Oxford Road, Johannesburg, a new acquisition was on display, namely a brass name plate from the architectural firm “Kallenbach, Kennedy and Furner ARIBA  Architects“. The brass plaque had been donated to JHF by Ronald Sutherland of Durban.

Holy Famly College (The Heritage Portal)

It is a beautiful solid brass plate and is from the Durban offices of Kallenbach, Kennedy and Furner. It was originally in position at their offices on the 3rd floor, Yorkshire House, Field Street Durban and dates from at least as early as 1935 probably earlier.

Here is a wonderful memento of an architectural practice with a long history and a strong presence in Johannesburg and Durban with some fine buildings erected in Cape Town, Kimberley, and in other South African towns. Clive Chipkin in Johannesburg Style describes the firm as “a household name in the 1930s.”

Book Cover

Kallenbach, Kennedy and Furner was among the most successful architectural firms of the interwar period in South Africa. Their reputation was solid and their output prodigious. They designed synagogues (e.g. the Benoni synagogue...

In 1896 Johannesburg had reached its tenth birthday. The astounding growth of the town in its first decade meant that the authorities (at that stage It was the Johannesburg Gezondheids Comite or the Sanitary Board / Committee) wanted to know about the population of the town, its origins, location, composition, religions, local industries and occupations. The Sanitary Committee decided that a census of Johannesburg and its suburbs, within a three mile radius from the Market Square should be taken to capture accurate statistics to plan ahead for the needs of the new town. They wished to address issues of sewerage, drainage, property assessment rates in “a progressive town like Johannesburg”.

Market Square circa 1892 (Davies Brothers)

Census Essentials

The Census was conducted on 15th July 1896 under AH Bleksley, the Director of Census. The report was published some two months later on 15th September. It is a substantial document of many fold out pages of tables. The printing was undertaken by the Standard and Diggers’ News in Johannesburg. It is an extraordinary report because it is sophisticated, meticulous and detailed in the tabulations. The report opens up a window on early Johannesburg from an entirely different angle. The Sanitary Committee had to deal with a problem of jurisdiction and coverage; Johannesburg comprised the area administered by the Sanitary Committee and their authority extended...

One does not normally associate Bloemfontein with Royalty, but Bloemfontein, located in the centre of the country (and despite its Boer republican history), was always on the itinerary for that cluster of 20th century British Royal tours. It was included in the series of Royal perambulation around South Africa in 1925 (the Prince of Wales), 1934 (Prince George, later Duke of Kent) and 1947 (King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and their family).

Each visit was a frenetic two days of parades, visibility to all the citizens of the city, showy displays of public entertainment and a series of functions to which the elite of the city were invited. The Royal guests were the centre of attraction and republican politics largely set aside in an effort to show off this interior capital.

There was great excitement in Bloemfontein in 1947 when King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, steamed into the Bloemfontein station for a weekend of festivities, receptions, a dinner and a Free State short flight and authentic farm braai and game drive at Bultfontein. The Royal entourage was given a surprisingly warm welcome considering past republic history and the political divisions between English and Afrikaners and in the context of the rise of Afrikaner Nationalist sentiment that would culminate in the dominance of the National Party Government in 1948.

Bloemfontein is still a city of charm and visible mix of history - it was the capital of the Orange Free State Boer republic, (1895-1902); it...

The SAIA - KZN Regional Heritage Committee in Durban has raised alarm about the Barrie Biermann House currently under threat of demolition. Robert Brusse (in the chair), together with Rodney Harber, Trish Emmett, Lindsay Napier and Kirk White have launched a national appeal. The heritage community including architects everywhere wish to object to the demolition of this modernist Durban architectural gem.

The present campaign is initially focused on objecting to and convincing the Local Authority to veto the current application for consolidation of the two sites – Biermann’s and the neighboring site – and the rezoning of the consolidated property from Residential 900 to Institutional 2. The latter zoning will permit a broad range of other uses, but will also sanitize the current illegal (unregistered) use of the site for a medical practice and laboratory.

Once this application is 'terminated', the next step in the heritage recognition process will be to get the building provisionally declared. Most of the letters of objection submitted to date demonstrate the reasons for the preservation of the building and site.

Located on Glenwood Drive, Berea, House Biermann was the home of the architect Barrie Biermann, built with love, imagination and style. He forged a sense of the regional vernacular in the early 1960s, the house was started in 1961 and completed in 1962. There were two earlier structures on the site. Barrie Biermann adapted and redesigned the older property to create a unique and rather wonderful home. It is a property that misses the general protection of the...

Marian Laserson (nee Spilkin) architect, town planner, champion of wetlands and heritage campaigner passed away on 10 July at the Morningside Clinic of the Covid-19 Virus.

Marian was born in 1936, the daughter of Joseph and Rachel Spilkin. Her father was a Johannesburg civil and structural engineer whose practice was very involved in many of the buildings in the city. He retired at age 85. He clearly sparked an interest in his daughter in engineering and building technology. From her mother, Marian drew her social activism, as Rachel was politically active in the Progressive Party.

At over the age of 80, Marian was still a practicing professional architect and activist. She was a person of considerable intellect but her human touch, her sense of humour and her service ethic were her outstanding traits. Marian was an active campaigner in town planning and urban regeneration across a wide swathe of the north east of Johannesburg.

Her interests were varied. She was someone who knew an enormous amount about city by laws, routes through the inner workings of the city, how to lodge objections (which she often did on behalf of public interest groups). Her advice was concise and practical and she always followed up with an email to explain exactly what we needed to do to fight a heritage case.

Marian was an authority on water matters and the conservation of wetlands. She supported David Bagg and the Huddle Park fight to save the golf course and its subsequent development into a...

I am delighted that one of the Johannesburg Glimpses interviews conducted in the early 2000s by Mike Alfred was with Kenneth S Birch a giant of a mining man (click here to read). I have been aware of the work of Kenneth Birch for some time. Unfortunately I never met him. I know that the Birch archive was deposited with the University of Pretoria.

There are a number of framed, named, dated and signed paintings hanging on walls in the Academic Information Service, Special Collections Unit at the University of Pretoria. These are all originals.

There are more pictorial records in Birch's sketch books which are housed in the Archives at the main Library at Unisa. The K S Birch collection consist of 93 water-colour sketch books, folios, 19 family and personal photograph albums and what was called his 'Civilizations Book', comprising approximately 400 scholarly publications dealing with the great civilizations of the last 4 500 years.

Birch was a benefactor of his high school (Jeppe Boys and the Birch Block at Jeppe Boys High School) commemorates him.

Birch was an architecture graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand in 1936 and was a junior student to some of the Transvaal Group. Birch was a benefactor of Wits and supported the Barnato Hall of Residences on the West Campus and the Faculty of Engineering. He donated a piano to the School of Music. Following fund raising efforts in 1976, the Kenneth Birch Chair of Family Health was established at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Birch paintings of Johannesburg...

Here is some exciting news for the heritage community. Dr Ronald Levine, antiquarian book collector and dealer, is offering a remarkable Railway manuscript and some attachments for sale as a single lot, on the Antiquarian Auction in June 2020 (see www.antiquarianauctions.com).

The central item, the manuscript, is an original Cape Railway contract in calligraphic script dated 1858. This document is unique and I concur with the view of Dr Levine that this is one of the earliest and most important items of South African railway history or Railwayana. It is a South African heritage treasure and an extraordinary legacy item from the Cape colonial era of the 19th century. For this reason Dr Levine has restricted sale to South Africa, which will ensure that the sale of the manuscript will comply with the National Heritage Resources Act and remain in South Africa.

The first page of the contract in calligraphy - hand written on parchment

When Dr Levine shared the news of this auction with me, my curiosity was roused and I decided to read up and give the document some historical context.

South Africa was relatively late to acquire its first railway lines. From the early 19th century, Railways and the steam engines revolutionised long distance travel between towns and across...

EBay has on sale a medal to commemorate the declaration of Johannesburg as a city in 1928. I was immediately intrigued. I have never seen one of these medals but I am not a collector of such items. An internet search reveals that this medal is not regarded as rare but that prices fluctuate from as little as R45 to about $10 to as much as £18. It is a bronze medal.

Commemorative Medal

A medal opens a window on a bit of local history. It raised my curiosity. What makes a city a city or a town transition to a city? Is it the population of a city, the governance and administration, the capacity to run a comprehensive range of essential services. Or is it the presence of a cathedral and that tie between the civic and religious establishment. It would seem it could be any of these things.

John Shorten’s book, The Johannesburg Saga, (published in 1970) commissioned by the City of Johannesburg and meant to mark the city’s 80th birthday, in a chapter called City Status covers the interwar period of the 20th century. The chapter virtually opens with the essential fact that in 1922 (apart from the General strike of that year) the first Anglican bishop was installed in Johannesburg, a Dr ABL Karney. In May 1926 the foundation stone of St Mary’s Anglican Cathedral in Plein Street was laid. It was not consecrated until...