Johannesburg

I think Heritage Portal readers will be interested in my archival sleuthing. I have found the blueprint of the original plan for the Parktown home Gordon Leith designed in 1927. Then called Morgenzon for the Coddingtons and built in 3rd Avenue Parktown, Johannesburg. The name changed to Le Tholonet and the house became the home of Clive and Irene Mennell after World War II. It was with great sadness that we reported the loss of this fine heritage home to fire in July 2018 (click here to view report).

The remains of Le Tholonet (Kathy Munro)

The plan I have located is an old blueprint and is important as it proves that this was a Gordon Leith design. Close study of the plans shows elevations and sections, materials to be used, what the original home would look like and all the technical details relating to vents, waste water, chimney and flue etc. There were later alterations but the house remained essentially true to the ideas of Leith.

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The recent devastating fire at Brazil's National Museum (which gutted 20 million items) and last week’s tragic fire at the Bank of Lisbon Building in Johannesburg yet again highlights how political and official neglect and maintenance cut backs are placing lives – and South Africa’s valuable heritage – at risk. 

Bank of Lisbon Building (The Heritage Portal)

The Egoli Heritage Foundation has previously expressed concern about the state of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) which is home to one of the continent’s most valuable collections.

“In 2017 we were informed that JAG does not meet fire safety requirements. In fact, neither structural engineers nor fire safety inspectors wanted to sign off on the building following the disastrous attempts by the Johannesburg Development Agency to “renovate” the building”, says Herbert Prins of the Egoli Heritage Foundation.

“City authorities are playing with fire and putting the lives of their employees and visitors at risk. If lives are lost the Mayor will have blood on his hands”, he says.

In fact, in October 2016, Mayor Herman Mashaba publicly committed to the restoration of JAG to the epicentre of Johannesburg culture. Two years later nothing has been done.

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In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reflects on the 2005 restoration of Salisbury House. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 4 July 2011. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

One of Joburg’s oldest buildings – Salisbury House in Belgravia – has received the Johannesburg Development Agency’s Halala Conserving Joburg or Colosseum Award.
 
The building, built in 1903, was on the brink of ruin in 2000, when the School of Practical Philosophy (SPP) approached its owners, the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), with a proposal to restore it. Over the next five years they gave it much loving care, and today it shines in the glow of that care.
 
“Salisbury House is now recognised as an authentic restoration, following the principles of the internationally accepted Burra Charter for the conservation of sites of significance,” said the judges. The charter specifies a series of detailed rational processes to be followed under different disciplines of conservation. These are commonly a combination of preservation, restoration, reconstruction, adaptation and maintenance.
 
This category is open to both developers and owners, and acknowledges “outstanding achievement in conservation of heritage buildings in the inner city”. The judges described Salisbury House as “a South African landmark”.
 
The Halala Joburg Awards ceremony took place last week, and awards were given in the categories Sustaining Joburg; Relaxing & Playing Joburg; Caring Joburg; Working & Buying Joburg; Living Joburg; and Conserving Joburg.
 
The Colosseum Award has previously been given for...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reveals the deep connection that famous author Herman Charles Bosman had for the spaces and places of Johannesburg. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 21 January 2004. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Herman Charles Bosman watched as they demolished the old Magistrate's Courts in downtown Joburg. And felt "a kind of silent fury".

He wrote in his essay Old Johannesburg is Vanishing that the municipality had "no understanding of Johannesburg, no veneration for this city".

He went on: "I don't suppose, for one thing, that they've got too many genuine Joh'burg old-timers on the Council. Otherwise we wouldn't have every Johannesburg building turned over to a demolition-gang the moment it becomes historical."

His frustrations are an expression of his enjoyment of the city. The city where he wrote most of his work, becoming one of South Africa's most popular short story writers. In a series of short essays in Bosman's Johannesburg, Bosman reminisces about "Old Joh'burg", where he lived in the early 1920s and again in the 1930s and 40s.

He had good times in the city: rioting on the steps of the City Hall, visiting the city's pubs, seeking out old Joburgers and getting their perspectives, living on the edge of the CBD, walking the pavements and riding the trams. He was as familiar with Market Street, Commissioner Street or Rissik Street; Kensington, Lombardy East or Berea as any present Joburger.

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A few weeks ago I was privileged to be invited by Clive Chipkin to join his Joburg tour for a group of visiting American students from Brown University, USA. The group of 22 postgraduate students spent a week in Johannesburg at the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) in Parktown. Hats off to Brown for devising a study abroad programme on the complexities of South Africa beyond 1994 and its transition to democracy.

Clive Chipkin devised a personal tour to place Johannesburg in the context of its natural topography, the Witwatersrand. His tour reached across the grandest of hill top sites of the Witwatersrand. Evidence of Clive’s macro thinking has already been presented on the Heritage Portal in his 2015 heritage survey of the Corridors of Freedom, prepared for the City of Johannesburg (click here to view). Clive expresses conceptual thinking in visual diagrams about place and space. He seeks viable architectural solutions for future settlement patterns in the city. For this special Brown student tour Clive drew two maps. The first map set out our specific route with the starting point as the Gauteng Legislature (of course we still call it the Johannesburg City Hall) and ended at the Cottesloe hill. The route allowed for four stopping points on the high points of Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand ridges. The second map places Johannesburg in a geographical context relating Witwatersrand hills ridges and rivers within Gauteng.

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In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie tells the story of the creation of the Constitutional Court's iconic South African flag. The piece first appeared on the City of Joburg's website on 8 September 2006. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

The Constitutional Court has a new artwork – a beautifully beaded and embroidered South African flag, positioned above the judges’ seats in the courtroom.

Measuring six metres by 2.5 metres, the hand-stitched flag with its bright colours, hangs in a wave shape, a striking counterpoint to the muted, earthy tones in the courtroom. Its fine detail of neatly stitched beads, sequins and embroidery attests to hours of meticulous work.
 
Completed in March this year by a group of six KwaZulu-Natal women, led by Leonie Malherbe, it took around five months to finish and is described by her as a task equivalent to “swallowing an elephant”.

The flag had been commissioned last year by the artworks committee of the Constitutional Court, consisting of judges Albie Sachs, Yvonne Mokgoro and Johann van der Westhuizen. The art collection of the court consists of 200 works, collected since 1994 when the court came into being.

Constitutional Court from above (The Heritage Portal)

Malherbe approached the project with some trepidation, daunted by the enormity...

Thirty Three Nostalgic Coloured and Monochrome Postcards - Johannesburg. (Edwardian). Published: Braune & Levy, Printers & Engravers, Johannesburg, Circa 1904-8. One postcard was used with postmark and stamp. The remaining 32 were unused and have been removed from an old album and carry slight paste marks to blank side. All postcards printed by Braune & Levy, Johannesburg. Thankfully photographed for an auction on Antiquarian Auctions.

Click here for some background on this collection and postcard history in general.

1 - Jeppestown - Park with Jeppe's Monument. No.1001. Coloured

2 - Jeppestown - Park. No. 1005. Coloured.

3 - Jeppestown - Marshall Street. No. 786. Coloured.

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I recently came across a remarkable set of 33 period coloured and monochrome postcards of Johannesburg (click here to view). The postcards date from somewhere between 1904 and 1908. They are photographic images and show street and architectural views of Johannesburg in the Edwardian period. They were published and printed by a company called Braune and Levy of Johannesburg. 32 of these postcards (of the 33) were saved as unused blanks and just one had been used and had a postmark and a stamp. The postcards must have been removed from an old album. This set was sold in an online auction (Antiquarian auctions) in July 2016 and the hammer price was $100. I would assess that price as a fair market price as early postcards of Johannesburg sell for between  R50 and R100 a card. I wish I had been alert and had put in a bid in 2016 but this is “one of those ones that got away”. However, we are fortunate indeed that Antiquarian Auctions placed images of all the postcards online as part of their catalogue and I have simply consolidated in this article that which can be extracted and saved.

Of course it is likely that at least some of these postcards would have been in Oscar Norwich’s much sought after 1986 book A Johannesburg Album. Historical Postcards (published by AD Donker, 1986). Norwich had the most wonderful collection of postcards and his focus was on the postcard in relation to Johannesburg history. Deltiology (or...

In the fascinating article below, journalist Lucille Davie explores the history of four landmark Joburg castles. The piece was first published on the City of Johannesburg's website on 23 July 2003. Click here to view more of Davie's work. Unfortunately, in 2018, the Three Castles Building has deteriorated significantly and remains endangered. Local heritage organisations are concerned by the lack of information about the state of the Kensington Castle. They were able to ascertain that the cannon and a brass plaque were stolen a couple of years ago. The Kyalami Castle now belongs to the Church of Scientology.

For a town that started on a dusty, open patch of veld 117 years ago to be able to boast a number of castles seems incredible. But it’s true – Johannesburg has four “castles” around the city and suburbs, the oldest having been built in 1898 and opened by President Paul Kruger, when the town was barely 12 years old and still a rough, raucous place where men believed they would make their fortunes from gold.
 
But don’t expect to see grand, medieval castles that would have housed kings and princesses and knights, with a moat and impressive battlements. Johannesburg’s castles are very modest, two of them are homes with one or two turrets, one is a hotel and conference centre, the other a burnt-out shell of a building, one of its wings operating as a business.
 
The Three Castles Building, Marshall Street
 
The Three Castles Building, on the corner of Marshall and Goud...

The series of articles below tells the story of the controversy surrounding the destruction of the Top Star Dump and Drive-In. The articles were written by journalist Lucille Davie between 2006 and 2010. Despite talk of redevelopment the site remains vacant in 2018. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Top Star Drive-in fights for its life

October 26, 2006

The Top Star Drive-in, a landmark of the city, has been saved from reclamation by a two-year protection proclamation but this will soon be challenged in court.
 
Published in the August provincial gazette, the protection is a measure to slow down the progressively changing landscape of the southern suburbs of the city, as well as save some mine dumps as heritage items.
 
Sophisticated technology now enables the mining industry to extract fine traces of gold from the dumps, not possible 100 years ago when the dumps were created. Many mine dumps have already been reclaimed, and the remaining soil has been deposited in two huge dumps being created alongside Nasrec.
 
The 50m tall Top Star dump, typical of dozens of dumps immediately south of the city centre, has a special significance for Joburgers because they recall going to the drive-in and watching movies with the city’s skyscrapers as a stunning backdrop.

The back of...