Pretoria

I was Assistant and for extended periods, Acting Curator of the previous South African Railways Museum in Johannesburg from 1972 when it was still housed under Rissik Street Bridge at the station as it had been since 1956 and then from 1973, in South Station Building which housed the 1932 station concourse and the famous ‘Blue Room’ Restaurant - reached from the main entrance to the old Johannesburg Station off de Villiers Street – corner of Eloff St.

This is the Museum staff in 1973 photographed in the 1932 Station Concourse in front of the NZASM ‘Emil Kessler’ 14-Tonner locomotive. Left to right: Charles McLean, Museum Assistant, Dan Grib, Correspondence Clerk, Mr.Venter, Museum Carpenter, Johnny Orsmond, Museum Display Artist, Les Pivnic, Assistant Curator, Jan Coffee, Curator, Winnie Venter, Research Officer, Frank Cage, Museum Guide, Harold Rennie, Carpenter, Pietro Sabatelli, Workshop staff and Gordon Payne, Accessions Clerk.

Returning briefly to the Museum as it was under the Rissik Street Bridge, here are a few photos of the Museum in that period 1956 – 1972:

A small portion of...

My father was not a famous musician nor did he raise extraordinarily talented musical children. However, he did give all of his three children an appreciation for music and the arts.

When I was a child, growing up in a family of five, including my parents, my older brother and my twin brother, music was a constant in our home at 12 Pitso Street in Atteridgeville.

Most weekdays, my father David "Fighter" Moloantoa would be away on work business. He was a career marketer, sales representative and businessman.

In the 1980's, during his heydays as a sales representative, he introduced many new products and services to the black township market all over South Africa and beyond. These products included well-known household brands such as Colgate tooth paste, Badedas bath soap and many others.

Over weekends when he was home, the family would be treated to the music that he'd discovered while he was away. I can recall him bringing new music records, called LPs from his red Ford Cortina and playing them on the record player in our dining room.

Diana Ross and the Supremes, Quincy Jones and his "We Are The World" ensemble, Miles Davis and The Union of South Africa are some of the music albums that would be on heavy rotation in our household all weekend long.

Aside from his own record collection, my father shared his love for music with some of his neighbourhood friends. Most of them were into jazz.

Bra Boykie, who lived in...

Little did I know that the “old man”, Dotman Pretorius, who captured a photograph of a group of course goers during the mid-1980s, which I was part of, would become a personal research subject some 40 years down the line. Dotman would have been in his late 60s at the time he captured this particular photograph.

When capturing the photograph, he used old-fashioned flashlight technology. I was so intrigued by this, that I asked him whether I may have the large blue glass bulb that he used to produce the flashlight. He happily parted with the unusable item, an item which still features in my photographic collection.

Four decades later, in a Johannesburg-based book shop, I stumbled upon a number of good quality and unique photographs of various themes captured by Dotman Pretorius. Those that initially attracted my attention were the photographs taken by him at Pretoria’s Capitol Theatre during the 1950s.

Opening evening of a 1955 British movie “Geordie” at the Pretoria Capitol theatre during 1956. The movie entails a Scotsman who competes in the summer Olympics, therefore the presence of the pipe band. The theatre, on Parliament Street...

This article reflects on the early religious establishments in Pretoria, intuited from images as portrayed on picture postcards (mainly between the early 1900s and the late 1920s). The remainder of the images included in this article are standard photographic formats contained in the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) or obtained from Friedel Hansen and Rosa Swanepoel.

From the dawn of civilization, religion, with its extraordinary and powerful influence, has played a significant role in the broader realm of human existence. Today, religion remains the lifeblood of many societies all over the world.

These living faiths, in turn, provide us with insights into the lives and rituals of those immersed in their particular religion.

In order for society to live out its religious convictions, places to worship and perform religious rituals came into existence, resulting in some of the world’s most intricate and ostentatious architecture.

Compared to the rest of the world, South Africa has a significantly younger religious history.

Some conflicting information seems to exist on the earliest 'western' religious establishments in South Africa. It has been suggested that the first religious complex to be built in South Africa was around 1678 in Cape Town – the cornerstone of which was laid by Willem Adriaan van der Stel.

Pretoria’s first religious building was erected during 1857, resulting in a gap of some 180 years between South Africa and Pretoria’s first religious complex!

In comparison, Pretoria’s religious history seems almost insignificant considering the above, yet early photographic images produced of Pretoria’s...

Of all the remaining old houses on the Sunnyside South campus in Pretoria, one seems uglier than the others. It is cheaply built, without a scrap of architectural merit. This is Building 20, now abandoned and full of junk.

The west side of the Sunnyside South ‘ugly house’, also known as Building 20 (Sue Taylor)

Between 2003 and 2008, this derelict house was lived in by the builders doing construction work at the Sunnyside South locality. While the western section of the house they occupied was pretty horrible, the eastern side of the house seemed even more unpleasant and industrial in some way.

“This place is haunted,” a young security guard told me recently. The young man then explained that the building was once used as a mortuary and that sometimes ‘ghost tours’ visit the house at midnight. There is very convincing blood spatter on many of the interior walls.

I set out to investigate the circumstances behind the guard’s statement. At first, I studied aerial photos and satellite images and examined the heritage report and Sunnyside campus Master Plan (Cultmatrix 2013) looking for any mention of such a bizarre function for Building 20. I could not find any mention of a mortuary in this locality. Even academic literature offered no clues. Perhaps this...

Jacaranda trees (Jacaranda mimosifolia D. Don) are native to South America and first came to Pretoria in 1888. A travelling nurseryman called Tempelman sold two jacaranda seedlings to Jacob Daniël (Japie) Celliers, who resided at Myrtle Lodge, 146 Celliers Street, Sunnyside.

In 1939 these trees were fenced in as a protection measure. A plaque was also placed at the site to commemorate the event. This was unveiled by the Mayor of Pretoria, Ben Swart, on 8 November 1939. This indeed indicates that jacaranda trees were seen as important to the city. It is said that many of the jacaranda trees in the city originated from these two so-called ”parent trees”.

The Plaque (AC van Vollenhoven)

One of the first two Jacaranda trees in Pretoria. Both are still going strong. (AC van Vollenhoven)

In 1898 Celliers secured a concession from the government to plant trees in Groenkloof. He ordered the seeds, which included jacaranda seeds, through a Pretoria businessman, James D Clark. Clark also donated 200 jacaranda trees...

I recently came across an old photograph album of interest to Pretoria historical studies. I found it in an antique shop in Howick in November. It is printed with the name of the photographer, R S Watson.

The album contains photographs of public occasions and important persons / historical figures on the city scene from the 1920s to 1930s. I purchased the album and intend to donate it to the University of Pretoria‘s School of Architecture archive. Before handing it over I thought I would compile a quick post for The Heritage Portal in the hopes that Pretoria enthusiasts could throw some light on individual photographs as well as the photographer. It all adds to the historical record.

There are 24 photographs and it seems that the common thread is the photographer. The photos are of diverse public civic occasions from the interwar period. Three Governor Generals appear: Connaught (1920-1924), Athlone (in office 1924-1930) and Clarendon (1930 -1937). So does a Royal Prince, the Duke of Kent who visited South Africa in 1934. Pretoria was on parade, there is a military flavour to many of the photographs... artillery units, mounted infantry, old and new flags are flown, and troops are inspected.

A page of typed notes offers a summary set of captions but only 21 of the 24 photographs have been covered and the notes are very sketchy... no dates, lots of guess work and no locations.

We catch glimpses of the Union Buildings, Pretoria Station, Church Square, Government House, Pretoria Streets, festival...

Nedbank’s history is an assemblage of 15 entities that merged into the group throughout the past two centuries allowing Nedbank to trace its origins back to 1831. This collective consists of entities such as the Board of Executors (BoE), Syfrets, the Permanent Mutual Building Society, the Cape of Good Hope Bank Savings Society, Boland Bank, UAL, the Natal Building Society, and of course the Nederlandsche Bank en Credietvereeniging.

Pretoria roots

The first South African branch of the Nederlandsche Bank en Credietvereeniging was opened in Church Street, Pretoria, in 1888. By 1897, the bank’s presence had grown exponentially, and a larger building was built. The structure, designed by WJ de Zwaan, was completed in 1897 and still stands today, and is in use by the Tshwane Tourism Office and is still known affectionately as the Old Netherlands Bank Building. This sandstone masterpiece served as Nedbank’s head office until 1953, when the bank moved into its third, and final, Pretoria-based head office, designed by Norman Eaton. It is still in use today, on what is now known as Thabo Sehume Street.

The first South African branch of the Nederlandsche Bank

Old post...

I regularly exercise in the Union Buildings gardens and since 2017 I have been advising the Department of Public Works of water leaks and other maintenance issues, most of which were dealt with promptly by Bennitto Motitswe, but since his transfer, things have gotten much worse. I sent a comprehensive list of issues to the Department in May 2019, along with photos. Apart from a water leak repair and a significant improvement in the maintenance of the gardens themselves, none of the other more serious issues I raised have been dealt with. All of the issues I have noted would have been picked up by anyone doing even the most cursory inspection of the precinct.

The quality of the workmanship was appalling, with the copings being replaced skew and cement mortar having been spilt all over the stonework below the coping. You would certainly not want the individual responsible for that work to go anywhere near the other stone masonry in the Union Buildings gardens...

The following is an extract from a paper by Art Historian Professor Alexander Duffey in which he explores the many artists who contributed in one way or another to establish the Union Buildings as an important icon, not only of Pretoria, but also South Africa. These artists can be grouped into two distinct categories: those who contributed directly to the embellishment of the buildings and their surroundings and those who made representations of the buildings and their surroundings.

A large number of artists produced paintings, etchings and drawings of the impressive Union Buildings and through their work helped to make these buildings known worldwide and establish them as one of South Africa’s important architectural icons. The earliest known representation of the buildings are a number of watercolour perspective paintings by the architect, Herbert Baker, dating from June 1909. The most impressive is the water colour painting present in MuseumAfrica, which was also used in etch-form for the cover of the commemorative programme for the laying of the cornerstone by the Duke of Connaught on 26 November 1910.

Watercolour of the Union Buildings by Herbert Baker

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