Johannesburg CBD

I returned to Johannesburg from Durban late in 1945 with my mother when the War in Europe was finally over. My dad would soon return from the Middle East after serving with the SA Medical Corps in Cairo at a military hospital.

We took up temporary residence at a boarding house in Edith Cavell Street opposite the Twist Street Primary School. It was time to adapt to our new life back in Johannesburg, the City of my birth in 1935 in Brixton. I attended Twist Street Primary for standard 3 to 5 before going on to high school at Parktown Boy's High in Wellington Road, Parktown. After settling in, my parents found a flat in Kilkenny Court in de Villiers Street off Claim Street and the main railway lines coming into Johannesburg from the eastern side of the City were only one block away from where we lived.

Perhaps I should explain that I already had an interest in trains and ships - actually anything to do with transport but my main interest at this stage was railways. I learnt to ride a bicycle - my dad was my tutor - and after a short wobbly period, I gained confidence to ride all over the City and especially to the Johannesburg Railway Station.

I would ride my bike to the station on a Sunday morning to witness the departure of the fast (1st and 2nd class only) passenger train to Cape Town. There was a road tunnel from Harrison Street under the railway lines direct to platforms 3, 4, 5 & 6 for cars taking departing passengers right to the platform from...

A few months ago it was my  pleasure to lunch with Mr Walter Pon, of first Chinatown of Johannesburg and Brett McDougall (Chairman of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation). Mr Pon has a passion for the history of the Chinese community in South Africa. Lunch was a gastronomic route into Chinese culture and history - our meeting point was the Ming Woo restaurant (corner of Alexander and Commissioner Street) which started and ended with copious small cups of delicate green tea. Lunch was Dim Sum, a variety of enticing servings of Chinese delicacies. This unpretentious family Chinese restaurant is on the ground floor of one of Johannesburg’s architectural marvels, Pabst’s Chinese United Mansions,  which dates from 1948. We immediately drop into Chinese history and culture, and move into  a deep conversation about heritage, the meaning of a Chinese presence in Johannesburg and the strands of Chinese history that ought to be preserved and presented today.

Pabst’s Chinese United Mansions (The Heritage Portal)

The Chinatown area is an area of significance for the small Chinese Community in Johannesburg. There has been a Chinese presence in this area from the 1890s till today despite the restrictions of Apartheid. This is where Chinese culture in Johannesburg is anchored. The original Chinatown of Johannesburg is located in the Ferreirasdorp area, historically known as the Malaikam bounded by...

The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation has been given the generous gift of a delightful 1987 centenary calendar, celebrating the 100 years of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The Calendar comprises six prints of watercolours by the well-known artist of that era, Philip Bawcombe.

We have taken the decision to photograph the prints and share them with the heritage community but also to sell the Calendar as a fundraiser for the JHF. The price we are asking is R600 for 6 large prints – the size is 52 x 49 cms for each print on high quality paper. They are eminently suitable for framing as a set of 6 and ideal for a company office or a study. You will be supporting a good cause as the JHF will use these funds for its work (e.g. the digitization of heritage records, more blue plaques for Johannesburg, the restoration of stained glass windows in a heritage church, supporting the Johannesburg Zoo 115 celebration etc.). We are always in need of donations to spend on heritage projects. Email - Katherine.Munro@wits.ac.za.

Thank you to Tom Bramwell for his donation and James Findlay for his ongoing support.

Philip Bawcombe watercolour prints are very collectable. He was best known for his delightful books Bawcombe’s Johannesburg  (1973) and Bawcombe’s Kimberley (1976). The text in both books was by Ted Scannell. H.F. Oppenheimer hailed Philip Bawcombe’s Kimberley (1976) as capturing “the spirit and portraying the fabric of old Kimberley,” and announced that his De Beers Company had acquired the original collection for permanent display...

What do names such as ‘Astoria, Regal, Plaza, Victory, Pigalle, Empire, Roxy, Odeon, Vaudette, Regent, Apollo, Ritz, and Bijou’, mean to you?

Generation Z will probably think they are apps and Millennials that they are computer games. Generation X will think of them as names of men’s suits, restaurants or maybe small-town hotels. Only the Baby Boomers will recognise the evocative names of long closed and largely forgotten bioscopes.

There was a time when almost every South African town and most large suburbs had a bioscope or bio cafe and sometimes more than one.  A bioscope was considered more genteel than a bio cafe, where you could watch two alternating films for the price of one and get a free cup of water diluted cold-drink as well.

The Royalty Building on Pritchard Street was once home to a bio cafe (The Heritage Portal)

I grew up in Krugersdorp from the mid-60’s to the mid-70’s and still remember the feeling of anticipation when my two cousins and I went to see a film or ‘movie’ as we called it, at the ‘Vaudette’ or ‘Italia’, the two main bioscopes in town. There was also the local bio cafe, the ‘Capitol’, which I think was spelt with an ‘o’ not an ‘a’, but as children we...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the history of St Alban's Church in Ferreirastown and describes its restoration in 2012. The article was originally published on the City of Joburg's website on 19 February 2012. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

The pigeon droppings in the St Alban’s Anglican Church turret were so thick and toxic that, when conducting restoration work on the church, the building foreman was forced to go home, see his doctor and take a day off.
 
The droppings have accumulated over years, posing a serious health risk because they dry out and the dust becomes airborne, carrying diseases like salmonella, meningitis, and lung infections. Once scaffolding was in place, the droppings were manually removed.
 
Over the past year the 84-year-old church has undergone restoration, principally to repair its waterproofing by replacing roof tiles, gutters and downpipes, and pigeon-proofing the turret, of course.
 
Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust (now the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation) chairperson Flo Bird has been the driver of the restoration work. The major problem, she says, was the leaking roof and gutters, allowing rain to damage interior woodwork and cause damp in the walls.
 
Bird managed to raise funding through the Mackenzie Family Trust and the Oppenheimer family.
 
“The water-proofing has been completed. This was the most expensive part involving replacing the box gutter, repairing all flashings, fixing some of the roof slates, installing and painting new gutters and downpipes, adjusting the run-off channel...

If you want to literally touch Johannesburg’s gold mining days, check in with James Findlay’s Collectable Books and Antique Maps store, recently re-located from his Saxonwold home to the basement of the Rand Club in the inner city.
 
The dignified old club is the perfect place for his collection of antique memorabilia. The grand Edwardian edifice is a bit of an antique itself: built in 1904, it was the third gentlemen’s club on the site and is rumoured to have been chosen by that now infamous capitalist and imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes.

The Rand Club (The Heritage Portal)

In this rarified atmosphere, Findlay gets to touch bygone eras every day. For instance, he owns an 1889 hand-rolled share certificate decorated with 24-carat rolled gold or gold leaf. He has 75 of these certificates for sale, so you can touch early Joburg as well.
 
“You are honouring what you admire by owning it,” he says, “you can own something beautiful; you see yourself in the items, you identify with the item.”
 
He’s moved into the spacious billiards room which was disused after being flooded five years ago, and has given it fresh energy. It’s a genteel space for a gentle, soft-spoken man. With grey concrete floor, its walls are now lined with bookshelves and display cases packed with...

I recently came across the souvenir album Barnett's Views of Johannesburg and Suburbs. I photographed a panoramic view of the early town (in three sections) and thought I would share it. The book has no date but the look of the cover, very art nouveau design with floral garland, and the street scenes and buildings leads me to believe that it was published in the late 1890s or early 1900s. It is probably post 1897 but pre the introduction of Chinese labour to the Rand in 1904. This volume came up on sale on Antiquarian (book) auctions a few years ago and sold for $125.

Album Cover

Some of the images inside the album are familiar as Barnetts was the professional photography firm whose collection of glass plates came to be owned by The Star (collection now housed at Wits Historical papers, William Cullen Library). Two thousand photographs comprise The Star Barnett Collection and there were hundreds if not thousands of Barnett postcards. In 1966 The Star published two volumes of early JHB and South African photographs from the collection and those two books are now much sought after Africana books. They have a price tag of up to R500 each.

Volume I

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Many readers will be aware that the Joburg Cenotaph was vandalised recently. The City of Joburg's Heritage Department pulled out all the stops to ensure that it was cleaned before the hugely important National Remembrance Sunday Service on 11 November 2018. Below are before, during and after photos via The Heritage Portal and Sticky Situations.

Before

Vandalised Cenotaph (The Heritage Portal)

During

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Markhams Building, located on the corner of Eloff and Pritchard Streets in Johannesburg, is a landmark of the city. It is striking because it has survived. Built in 1897, it is nearly as old as the city itself.

The heritage icon was sold on auction in September 2018 (The Heritage Portal)

Saving Markhams was a heritage battle of note in the late seventies (click here for details). Markham’s was a mens outfitters where you could purchase both off the rack readymade suits and bespoke clothing. In 1972 Markham’s was the shop for my about to be husband to purchase his wedding attire - he opted for a pure wool cheque fabric and a matching mustard shirt. The suit was durable and lasted about two decades until the moths got it. Today we laugh at how dated and period our wedding photos look.

The City of Johannesburg in conjunction with the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation unveiled a blue plaque at Markhams in October 2012 (I was one of the JHF supporters). It was a proud moment.

Markhams...

Johannesburg has dozens of remarkable staircases inside its houses, hotels, offices, churches, fire stations and apartment buildings. Some are well known while others are more obscure. Below are ten of my favourite. Enjoy! Feel free to send through pics of your favourites.

Stewarts and Lloyds Building / Marshdale House

This building never fails to intrigue visitors to Johannesburg. It was once part of a larger building that was demolished in the 1990s. I assume the plan was to incorporate the corner tower and dome into a larger building but this never materialised. I was lucky enough to get inside a few years back. The staircase dominates the tower and is spectacular!

View of the staircase from above (The Heritage Portal)

Staircase from below (The Heritage Portal)

The remaining tower and dome (The Heritage Portal)

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