Johannesburg CBD

Johannesburg celebrated its 130th birthday on 4th October 2016 in great style with a memorable happy event organized by the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF) under the direction of its incomparable founder Flo Bird. The executive mayor, Herman Mashaba, as first citizen of Johannesburg was guest of honour at the birthday party held at Museum Africa in Newtown. Johannesburg city  Councillor, Nonhlanhla Sifumba, member of the Mayoral comittee responsible for Community Development was also a guest of honour. Children, cake, candles and a rousing Happy Birthday cheered Johannesburg into its 14th decade. 

Flo Bird and Kathy Munro welcome Herman Mashaba (Gail Scott WIlson)

There were six birthday cakes with the 130 years marked in candles, with the principal birthday cake iced in city colours of  green and gold made by Win Job. 

One of the birthday cakes (Gail Scott Wilson)
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The Three Castles Building is a landmark in downtown Johannesburg. It started life as a factory for the production of 'Three Castles' cigarettes with the facade becoming a powerful marketing tool for the brand. Initially 100 female workers were employed to roll the cigarettes but by the late 1890s this role was taken over by machines. According to John Shorten in The Johannesburg Saga, the factory was unable to keep up with demand despite producing over 300 000 cigarettes a day! 

It appears as though the factory began production in 1895. There is some confusion about its construction date as the official opening ceremony, attended by President Kruger, only occurred in 1899. This was Kruger's last official visit to Johannesburg according to Shorten.

Today the structure is in a pitiful state and appears on South Africa's 'In Danger' list (click here to view). In the article below David Sieff provides some fascinating memories of the period when his family owned the building and argues that the building must be saved for future generations.

My mother had studied corsetry garment design before emigrating from Lithuania to South Africa in 1935. Working on the kitchen and dining room tables at home, they started a small garment manufacturing business, later graduating to premises in Anderson Street, opposite the rear of the Police Barracks. By the 1950s these premises were too small for the business and they moved to the Three Castles Building located on the corner of Marshall and Goud Streets.

'Naomi Beauty Form' was the name of the firm which was well known across the...

In the middle of August 2016 employees from South 32 began the move from the landmark 6 Hollard Street in downtown Johannesburg to offices in the Worley Parsons Building in Melrose Arch. The move marks the end of a long and historic association that the firm (via its predecessors) has had with the Johannesburg CBD.

Old South 32 Head Office at 6 Hollard Street (previously the BHP Billiton / Gencor Head Office)

Worley Parsons Building Melrose Arch (The Heritage Portal)

South 32 was established in 2015 when it was unbundled from BHP Billiton but its origins go back to 1895 when the General Mining and Finance Company was formed. After a long and complex corporate battle in the 1970s, General Mining acquired Union Corporation (founded in 1897 as A Goertz and Company) and the General Mining Union Corporation Ltd. was born (known as Gencor by 1980). In 1994, after lengthy negotiations, Gencor took control of Billiton from Shell to become a global giant. Then in 2001 Billiton merged with BHP to become one of the biggest diversified mining companies in the world. This very...

Diagonal Street is one of Johannesburg's iconic streets with an energy hard to find anywhere else. It is difficult to imagine a time when its very existence was threatened. The following compilation of sources provides an overview of the preservation of Johannesburg's most famous street scene. The details appeared in a survey conducted by Johann and Catharina Bruwer in the early 2000s. Thank you to the City of Johannesburg for giving us permission to publish.

A section of Diagonal Street (The Heritage Portal)

In The Star (“JCI plans to demolish Indian shops”), of 18 March 1987, it was reported that the Johannesburg City Council’s planning department had been approached by Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI) with a view to the proposed demolition of the city’s most famous street scene. “The Victorian shops on Diagonal Street between Pritchard and President Streets, with their balconies, filigree iron work and the colourful Cairo-style fruit market date back to 1896. The street was recently renovated and fitted with Victorian streetlamps by Anglo American at a cost of R800 000. The public is unlikely to take the news sitting down. The shopkeepers, whose shops are a tourist attraction, were appalled when they heard the news yesterday.” It was reported that the Argus company had sold its Diagonal Street property behind The Star building to JCI for...

If you visit the High Court in Johannesburg you will notice a massive statue on the western edge along Pritchard Street. The statue commemorates the life of Captain Carl von Brandis -the 'Father of Johannesburg'. In the following article, P. J. Edginton uncovers some fascinating biographical details. The article first appeared in the old Johannesburg Historical Foundation's journal Between the Chains.

A man who could efficiently carry out his duties as a senior Government official, keep order in an unruly community with tact and humour and yet hold the affection of the inhabitants of a rough mining town must have been a remarkable character. Such indeed was Captain Carl von Brandis, the first official Mining Commissioner of the Witwatersrand and, shortly thereafter, the first magistrate of Johannesburg.

Von Brandis Statue in 2015 (The Heritage Portal) - The paint you see has been removed by the City of Johannesburg

Born in Germany in 1827 of a military family, he saw service in Austro-Hungary and Italy. In 1857 he came to the Cape with the German Legion (a British regiment). It was here he met and marred Jane Margaret Hohne, who bore him four children and who was a devoted wife throughout his varied career. By 1859 he was serving the Government of the...

To the west of Marshalltown along Main Street in Johannesburg lies the Anglo American Precinct. Anglo was one of the companies that remained committed to the inner city during the flight to the north in the mid to late 1990s. With a remarkable set of buildings telling the history of the company, city and country we understand why! The jewel in the crown is certainly 44 Main Street which was a landmark in its time and remains so today. The wonderful piece below appeared in the Anglo publication 44 News in the early 1980s.

When the staff of Anglo American, then some 200 strong, moved at the end of 1939 from the cramped quarters in Anmercosa House, Hollard Street, to their new quarters at 44 Main Street, the building was described as "quiet, dignified and monumental in design". The Sunday Times, Johannesburg, said it set "a new trend in commercial architecture in South Africa".

Anmercosa House (SA Builder)

The decision to construct the building was taken in 1935, with a number of certain basic principles laid down as to what form it would take. The first of these was that an entire city block should be acquired, so that the new building could occupy a site by itself and not be cramped by neighbouring buildings. The second was that the new...

In the article below, Oscar Norwich answers the fascinating question 'When did Johannesburg first appear on a map?''. Norwich was a prolific collector of maps and his priceless collection is now held by Stanford University. He was also the long time Chairman of the old Johannesburg Historical Foundation. The article first appeared in the 1984 edition of the Foundation's journal Between the Chains.

For many years the writer of this article has been asking both in South Africa and in overseas cartographical circles, when did the name of Johannesburg first appear on a map. After some years of research, a surveyor’s plan illustrated here was found housed in the Africana (Strange) Library of the Johannesburg Public Library. A surveyor’s plan is definitely acceptable as a map. Its author was Johann Rissik, of the Surveyor-General’s office, and it is dated 15 December 1886, approximately three months after the official Government Gazette proclaiming the opening of the Witwatersrand gold-fields.

'Stad Johannesburg'

The city of Johannesburg is vital in the history of South Africa as the centre of the largest and wealthiest gold fields yet known to mankind, discovered there in 1886. The Government then in power in the Zuid-Afrikaansche-Republiek (Z.A.R.), took steps, on receiving the official news of the discovery of...

A few years ago we received a selection of magnificent late 1950s and early 1960s photographs of Johannesburg from Gordon Clarke (via 702). The significance of the photographs goes far beyond a snapshot of the City at the time as Clarke explains:

For me they were not just photos of Johannesburg but a poignant memory of what I had had to leave behind. At the tender age of 14 I had attended the two day Congress of the People in Kliptown in June 1955 and on 16 August 1956, a week after the Womens' anti Pass march on the Union Buildings, I went into parental imposed exile to Zambia with my parents.

These photos were taken on fleeting visits back home, driven by the urge to be back in the movement and to lend a hand to the Treason Trial support group of the ANC, Transvaal Indian Congress, Congress of Democrats and the Congress of Young Democrats of which I was a founder member along with Ilse Fischer, Toni Berntstein, Barbara Harmel, Mark and Sheila Weinberg and Larry Anderson.

You will recall the police swoops in December 1956 that netted about 146 political activists on charges of treason. Perhaps my parents' decision to go into exile four months earlier was the right one! I slipped in and out of South Africa during school holidays between 1957 and 1960 and these were the images I captured with a basic, manual Canon camera.

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This fascinating piece was compiled by Janet Lee in 1993. She turned back the clock one hundred years to describe what life was like in Johannesburg in 1893. The article first appeared in the Johannesburg Historical Foundation’s journal Between the Chains.

The year 1893 was comparatively uneventful, if activities leading up to the Jameson Raid are anything to go by. And by comparison with other years in the history of Johannesburg and the Rand, it was not a year of such great moment. Nevertheless there were a number of events of note in many fields for which the year 1893 will be remembered.

The first mining finance house to explore deep levels was Rand Mines Limited, which was formed in 1893, taking over from its predecessor, H Eckstein & Company. In January of that year Lionel Philips, as outgoing President of the Chamber of Mines, mourned the death of Herman Eckstein, who had died earlier that month in his home-town Stuttgart, at the age of 47. Eckstein had been much respected by his colleagues on the Rand where he had come from Kimberley to found H Eckstein & Company to investigate the mining potential of the Witwatersrand.

Born in the same year as Eckstein, the Hungarian entrepreneur, Hugo Allois Nellmapius, died on is farm at Irene also at the age of 47, only a few months after having witnessed the opening of the railway from Johannesburg to Pretoria on January 1. Irene was one of the few halts on this three hour journey...

A lot has changed since Oscar Norwich compiled this piece about the famous Norman House in Doornfontein in the 1980s. Norman House was a grand mansion frequented by the who’s who of early Johannesburg. We are not sure when it was demolished. If anyone has any information please add it to the comments section below.

This mansion is situated near to the Irene Church with its front entrance on End Street in close proximity to the attractive Doornfontein Park. The mansion has an interesting historical provenance. It has always been associated with the Dale Laces of early fashionable Doornfontein and thereafter as the well-known Norman Nursing Home. It was originally built by JCI for Barney Barnato. Research has revealed that JCI in the book ‘The Storey of Johnnies”, published in 1965 by its staff, quotes on pg 23 - Barney Barnato’s residence as ‘Where his home in End Street which today is the Norman Nursing Home became the venue for the celebrated breakfast parties at which many of his financial deals were arranged”. In spite of further research it has so far been difficult to ascertain when it was built or who was the architect. It has been suggested by the African Library that in February 1980 a newspaper report by Barbara Scriben stated that the archival material records of Doornfontein were destroyed in 1893.

End Street Park (The Heritage Portal)

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