Yeoville

Yeoville is one of the oldest suburbs of Johannesburg, established around 1890 soon after the discovery of gold. During the early 20th century, Yeoville (and neighbouring Bellevue) was a middle- and working-class hub for European immigrants, especially Jews. Then, under the apartheid Group Areas Act, Yeoville became a whites-only neighbourhood, although many coloured and Asian residents secretly took up residence there. Yeoville went through a funky, alternate phase during the 1980s, but this era is a thing of the past. This article is about tracking down a remnant of Yeoville’s multi-racial past by finding a shop that was once a thriving Rockey Street men’s outfitter business run by Mr K B Patel.

Taking photos in Yeoville in the 1980s

In 1988 I did a photojournalism course and our group went to Rockey Street in Yeoville to capture images of life on this street. I took photographs of Mr Patel and his tailoring and men’s outfitter shop. Since then, I haven’t been to Yeoville at all. I drove around recently to try and find out where Mr Patel’s shop used to be and I couldn’t find it because almost everything has changed. Many of the old shop fronts have been repurposed and covered up with new hoardings and signage and substantial and often brutal burglar bars. Metal roller doors abound and the mechanism for these doors often obscures any remaining vintage signage. Using my 1988 photographs, Google Earth and an actual visit, I was able to find Mr Patel’s original shop.

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The now celebrated English architect James Alfred Cope-Christie (1870-1953) was active in Johannesburg between 1902 and approximately 1908. He was in the city for a relatively short time but made and left a legacy of three houses that have survived to the present. The three homes are in Parktown, Waverley and Yeoville.

House Hains in Yeoville was the earliest with the plans dated 1903. House Page in Waverley followed a year later and in 1905-6 Cope-Christie designed Dolobran which still stands at the corner of Oxford and Victoria Avenue in Parktown.

House Page (William Martinson)

Dolobran (Lucille Davie)

Today House Hains shows all the signs of Yeoville decay and neglect over a 25 year period. It is a substantial detached house. Its history reveals that it was a house of far greater substance and importance than its current position, somewhat cramped on a single stand. It deserves a second glance and a documentation of its architectural history.

Cope-Christie was the subject of a pamphlet by Dennis Radford and Peter Jackson in the 1990 series The Architects of Parktown (part of the Parktown Collection); there is coverage of his work on the Artefacts website (click here...

Research into Herbert Baker’s domestic architecture in Johannesburg led me to return to Doreen Greig’s excellent book Herbert Baker in South Africa. Appendix B lists Herbert Baker’s projects and a house in Yeoville at 10 Yeo Street designed in 1910 under the names of Baker and Masey for Mrs G B Given-Wilson is listed. It belongs in the body of work labelled the “Transvaal houses” of Herbert Baker. The house is listed as a Baker and Masey house of 1910 but in fact Baker’s partnership with Francis Masey was dissolved in 1909; Masey went to live in Rhodesia where he ran his own practice but he died fairly young, at the age of 51.

This set me wondering whether a Baker house could still survive in Yeoville. First port of call was to check Google Maps. This is the google view of the house in February 2015.

10 Yeo Street (Google Maps)

Di Steele of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation’s Resource Centre brought up an aerial view of Stand No 552 together with the name of the owner, a Thokozile Getrude (sic) Mbobo. The property was zoned for Residential 4 and valued at R691 000.

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Clive Chipkin passed away peacefully on January 10th 2021 in Johannesburg, aged 91. Clive was born on 21st March 1929 in Johannesburg, the city he made his own. He was an extraordinary person who lived a rich and full life and meant much to friends and colleagues in the heritage and architecture communities.

2013 Award of an Honorary D Arch

In 2013 his alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand, recognized his scholarship with the award of an Honorary PhD. His books Johannesburg Style: Architecture and Society 1880s to 1960s (David Philip, Cape Town, 1993) and Johannesburg Transition: Architecture and Society from 1950 (STE Publishers, 2009) are seminal monographs which made his name. They represent a lifetime of research, extraordinary knowledge and critical analysis.

Clive Chipkin leading a tour of the Ridges of Johannesburg for r Brown University students in 2018 (Kathy Munro ) 

The Importance of  Chipkin’s Two volumes on Johannesburg

Johannesburg Style quickly achieved iconic status and is regarded as a work of great distinction. Eric Itzkin describes it as a work of genius. The title, Johannesburg Style was meant to signify that Johannesburg has a characteristic way of doing things. Clive dissected how the colonial capitalist city with an entrepreneurial culture evolved – this was...

Which of our city’s architectural treasures don’t receive the credit they deserve? During lockdown we explored Joburg’s most underrated historic buildings on our Instagram and Facebook pages, and we’re happy to share them here too! 

Our first nomination is the Lion Match Factory in Industria. Designed in 1936 by Richard Day, the monumental Lion Match Factory is an Art Deco palace of industry. The facade is delineated by a series of simplified columns, decorated with three matches on their capitals. The columns are framed by a cornice of crisp parallel lines that emphasise the building’s horizontality. The architect clearly defines three entrances - two on either end in monumental projecting wings, and the main entrance framed by elegant Art Deco waterfalls and topped with a clock and flagpoles.

Lion Match Factory, Industria (Johannesburg Heritage Foundation)

Our second nomination for Joburg’s most underrated historic buildings is House Hains in Yeoville. Almost everyone knows Dolobran in Parktown, the most whimsical and romantic of Parktown’s mansions. Its architect, Cope-Christie, designed precious few buildings in Johannesburg, but...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Irving Lissoos earns his living as a highly respected, specialist urologist. He consults and operates from Milpark Hospital. But his life embraces other enthusiasms, among them a love of Johannesburg, partially illustrated by his membership of the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust. Lissoos’s guided tours through Joburg’s old cemeteries in Braamfontein and Brixton are always sell outs. Lissoos lives in Victory Park. He grew up in Berea, attended Yeoville Boys’ and King Edward’s schools. I arrived in his rooms one day armed with a tape recorder and one or two simple questions, asking him to talk about his early life. Nothing had been planned. He quite spontaneously and easily advanced down ‘memory lane.’ He told me with many chuckles and obvious reminiscent enjoyment, about a social existence, the world of his childhood and youth, which no longer exists:

Braamfontein Cemetery (The Heritage Portal)

‘My mom was born in London. Her father was a cabinet maker who came to Johannesburg just after the turn of the 20th century. She went to school in London but never got a chance to...

Kathy Munro's three part series on the Yeoville Water Tower comes to an end with this piece (click here to view the series index). The article highlights the overall German contribution to early Johannesburg and suggests that the German connection to the Yeoville Water might be a reason why its origins were concealed in 1914/1915. The article also sets out the overall significance of the landmark structure. The piece was first published in the December 2018 issue of Architecture SA. Thank you to Paul Kotze for giving us permission to publish.

Dr. Clive Chipkin, in an article in The Star newspaper (23/10/1980) wrote about the prima-facie evidence of German involvement in Johannesburg’s growth. South Africa imported heavy rails from F Krupp of Essen or from BVG of Bochum. Locomotives and steam engines were imported; for example, the firm Reunert and Lenz were agents for imported machines, engines and engineering equipment.
 
The German presence on the Witwatersrand and in Johannesburg was evidenced by early mining pioneers. Mr. George Albu came from Berlin, Mr. Julius Jeppe hailed from Rostock and Mr. Hermann Eckstein was born in Stuttgart. Mr. Carl Hanau was another Rand entrepreneur of German origin. Sir Julius Wernher was a prominent Randlord, who was born in Darmstadt. He was a key figure in the Eckstein company (Corner House) who later became anglicised. There were many others. German place names were in evidence in early Johannesburg – a Kaiser Street, a Wilhelm Street, Hohenheim the Phillips’ home in Parktown, the forest of Sachsenwald (that later became Saxonwold). The German Lutheran Church...

Below is Part 2 of Kathy Munro's wonderful series on the Yeoville Water Tower (click here to view series index). The piece takes an in-depth look at the historic blueprint and reveals the secrets of the water tower's origins. The article first appeared in the December 2018 issue of Architecture SA. Thank you to Paul Kotze for giving us permission to publish and to Gail Wilson for the use of some of her magnificent photographs.

It is literally an architectural “blueprint” or technical drawing. Firstly, there is a heading in German, Wasserturm mit Behälter von 50,000 gallons Fassungsraum (translation: Water tower with the capacity of 50 000 gallons). This pinpoints the German origin. We are able to date the tower with accuracy, as there is a date and place in the bottom right-hand corner – “Dortmund, d 2nd Januar 1913”. 

The top right-hand corner states Com [commission no] 2044) Blatt 1 [page 1]. We can assume that this was a commission and the first page of technical drawings. On the top left- hand corner is the name Fa. Geo L Kűstner, Johannesburg. Thus, there is a link to a Johannesburg man and to the tender mentioned in the annual reports of the Town Engineer.

Yeoville Water Tower Blueprint (click here to view full...

Many readers will have heard of the discovery of the original Yeoville Water Tower blueprint earlier this year. This discovery sparked a research journey which has culminated in a wonderful series of articles by Kathy Munro (click here to view series index). Below is the first installment which covers the early water supply history of Johannesburg and the origins of the Water Tower. The piece was first published in the Sep / Oct 2018 issue of Architecture SA. Thank you to Paul Kotze for giving us permission to publish. The powerful main image (copyright Gail Wilson) shows the 1913 Yeoville Water Tower to the left, the 1937 concrete water tower in the centre and Westminster Mansions in the foreground. 

The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation awarded the Yeoville Water Tower of Johannesburg a Category A heritage protection listing in its grading exercise of 2013. Its origins have been shrouded in mystery. The Water Tower, assembled from precast steel pieces dates from 1913 and was designed by the German engineering firm Aug. Klönne, of Dortmund, in Germany.

Yeoville Water Tower from the Observatory Ridge (The Heritage Portal)

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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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