Stonework

Over the holidays I was given a unique Christmas gift by my friend, Peter Digby who shares my enthusiasm for Johannesburg heritage items. It was a single old yellowed newspaper page, dated 9th November 1965, from The Star Newspaper. The page was saved in a cupboard of the Digby home because it carried an unusual story. The headline was: “Fine old stone in a new wall“. The article tells the story of a Mr Barney or Bernard Lobel (his name was actually Barnett Lobel) who rescued and saved the precision cut, dressed and shaped grey quartz and granite stone that was retrieved from the precinct and park when the Harrow Road (now Joe Slovo drive ) was widened and reconstructed in the late 1950s.   

Johannesburg walls and rocks

This yellowed fragile newspaper cutting set me thinking about Johannesburg walls and streets. If you look around the city, you will find examples of early stone and rock taken from the hilly ridges or from mining operations. Stones were quarried and it was all there for the taking. Since gold was embedded in a series of gold bearing reef and seams that ran for miles to the south of the city and descended at a 45% angle, extensive underground blasting was required and a great deal of quartz was excavated which could be used for building. Mine rocks were recycled into all sorts of structures from pioneering days. These rocks were all essential building material ahead of the making of bricks.

These...

Standard Bank Chambers, on the corner of Harrison and Fox Streets in the old financial district of Johannesburg, was for decades the bank’s biggest branch and, for a time, its head office. Designed by Stucke and Bannister and completed in 1907/8, it is one of Johannesburg’s historical and architectural treasures. Over the years many committees have suggested it should be declared a National Monument / National Heritage Site.

In the late 1970s the building underwent a major internal renovation in order to provide 'improved working environments' and a ‘more flexible use of office areas’. The outside of the building remained virtually unchanged but some important restoration work was done. Below is a brief but very interesting description of the restoration. It appeared in a 1980 edition of the publication 'Planning and Building Developments'.

The exterior of the building is constructed in stonework from a quarry which no longer exists. As the stonework, although basically sound, showed varying degrees of deterioration, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research was called in by the architects to report on the state of the stonework and to make suggestions regarding its renovation and preservation. Some remedial work had been done to the sandstone in the past and most of the sandstone appeared to be coated with what seemed to be a covering film. The first step was, therefore, to clean down all the existing stonework thoroughly, in order to expose the natural stone thus making possible a detailed assessment of the remedial procedures required...