CITICHAT 38/2002 - 27 September 2002
INNER CITY LIVABILITY, WHY DON’T WE RATHER TRY SAO PAULO? - 2
Some years ago I was on the 50th floor of the Carlton Centre with the Star’s James Clarke chatting about various aspects of the city. I was bewailing the fact that many of the more modern buildings were totally introverted - people came to work and parked in the basement, caught a lift to their office floor, ate in the cafeteria at lunch-time or in one of the executive dining rooms, had a work-out in the corporate gym and at the end of the day caught the lift back down to the basement and drove home. No interaction with the city at all. And the losers? The city as well as the individual. Livability isn’t just something that the city environment provides but is the sum of many things, and one of the vital ingredients is people. Whilst we were chatting, we saw a helicopter zoom past and settle on a rooftop helipad, disgorge its passengers who disappeared into the building and then zoomed off again. “There, see” I said to James, only part in jest, “some don’t even trust our roads!”
I was reminded of that incident when I was given an article on Sao Paulo published earlier this year in the Washington Post. The article says; “Sao Paulo – a city of 18 million, populated by the fantastically wealthy and the severely poor with little in between – is, by some accounts, a vision of future urban life in the developing world.”
In the case of Sao Paulo it was an industrial boom over the past century that lured millions of poor Brazilians from the destitute areas of the country to the city. As the writer puts it; “Most trade destitute rural lives for urban misery, piling into ever-growing slums that have become dens for gangs dealing in drugs, kidnapping and arms.” Sound familiar? Only in our case it was, ironically, as a result of our first taste of democracy as the repressive and restrictive laws of the previous regime, its social engineering, officially disappeared from the statute books.
And in our case, much of the “big business” that was still left in city, upped and left for the sought after sanctuary of the northern nodes led by many of our “captains of industry”. Sao Paulo appears to have been different in that business appears to have largely stayed in the city but moved their residential addresses in a double whammy that has been even more devastating. Firstly, they make no attempt to deal with the city problems, isolating themselves from the streets and, secondly they have moved their homes and families into new 'settlements'. But forget the three metre high walls topped with spikes and electrified fencing that our suburbs boast. Road closures and suburban fences? Oh no! they have moved to the next generation!
Whilst business has stayed in the city, the executives commute by helicopter, to home, to office, to meetings outside offices, to shop, even to church. There are 240 helipads in the city (New York has 10 – we have one maybe two) and helicopter companies estimate that liftoffs average 100 per hour. As helicopters are not cheap (between R4 million and R20 million in Sao Paulo), some businessmen syndicate their use, paying a one time fee of four hundred thousand rand and then a further fifteen thousand rand per month.
The determinants are quoted as being high crime (60 murders to 100 000 residents compared to 7.4 and 7.8 in the Washington metro area and New York respectively); frustration with traffic, lack of acceptable public transport and clogged highways.
A recent study has shown that a million Brazilian residents live in walled cities of which Sao Paulo has more than 300. These walled communities have helipads and limited entrances and exits all monitored 24 hours a day. Private security ‘armies’ some as large as 1 100 officers oversee every aspect of public life within the walled areas, whether at the shopping centre, school, sports facilities or gyms. Inside the ‘compounds’ every visitor is recorded by cameras and all exiting employees are ‘patted down’ and searched in front of live TV.
The wife of a banker who lives in Alphaville, some seven-and-a-half miles from the city centre (a walled community of 300 000 residents, three helipads and only four entrances/exits each monitored 24 hours a day) says that she is concerned that her kids are growing up in a bubble - "they go to school here, their friends are here but when we go (infrequently) to the city they ask "Mommy why is that man begging?" or "why do those kids live on the streets?"
Teresa Caldeira a noted Brazilian anthropologist and author of “City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo” sums it up; “ The elite have made a decision. Instead of looking to better Brazilian society in general, they are abandoning it and finding their own personal protection behind guarded walls. The rich are retrenching, restricting their lives in incredible ways and living their lives in an increasingly paranoid fashion.”
Other sociologists concur saying that Sao Paulo provides all the signs of the way urban society in Latin America's largest nation is changing. The writer of the article suggests, as you will have seen previously, that it may also be a "vision of future urban life in the developing world."
For us, warning, maybe, but vision, no! There are just too many visible signs of progress made during these past two years in particular. There is just so much energy, so many people and organisations committed to and actively working on the revitalisation of this city that I have every confidence that we have reversed the downward spiral and are off the bottom and on our way up. And 'people and organisations', thankfully, include the Executive Mayor and Council who continue to show the political will that is so essential an ingredient for success.
As an aside, I trust that their political will is going to continue to hold under the latest pressure that threatens the city's recovery, that from hawker associations over MetroMarket and street trading. They seem to be determined to prevent their members from being part of the future of the city by forcing them to continue trading on streets at subsistence levels and less. They, the hawker associations not the hawkers, would do well in Sao Paulo!
Cheers, neil
Friday, September 27, 2002
Friday, September 20, 2002
Inner City Livability Citichat 20 September 2002
CITICHAT 37/2002 - 20 September 2002
INNER CITY LIVABILITY, WHY DON’T WE RATHER TRY SAO PAULO?
Been thinking a lot lately about inner city livability sparked off by a number of articles and events.
The first article was one that appeared in the August edition of ‘Planning’ which provided an interesting and useful overview of city livability in European cities. Whilst it doesn't draw comparisons to any South African cities it ends with a statement that "It is indeed possible to build compact, livable cities."
The second was an editorial ‘Comment’ in the August edition of ‘Building Africa’ (also a really worthwhile magazine) which raised the question of the impact of the various projects underway in the inner city on “the revitalisation of the city and whether it will, in fact, make Johannesburg into a livable, user friendly city again.” Good question and we should welcome the raising of interest levels regarding the Inner City. However the writer raises her doubts against three of her own experiences. 1. Of a trendy Hillbrow in the ‘70s, (Hillbrow and CBD streets "crowded with people of all races and everybody having fun") plus, 2, concepts to achieve livable cities presented at the recent Built Environment Professions Convention by ‘distinguished local and international architects and urban designers’ and, finally, 3, a recent trip to Paris. I would strongly query these as a legitimate base. Yes, Hillbrow of the seventies was trendy and its and the CBD streets may have been crowded with people but the crowds did not reflect the demographics of the country as they proudly do today and certainly not everybody was having fun as claimed. The vast majority of our local population were as sure as hell not having fun in the seventies.
The writer goes on to ask ”How many intrepid tourists will be brave enough to venture into Newtown?….How many Johannesburgers will be brave enough to do so? Not any of our rainbow colours are at present encouraged to spend a Sunday afternoon in Newtown….” Just as a matter of interest, and excluding current statistics lest I be accused of misleading because of any additional numbers through the WSSD, visitors to Museum Africa increased from 34 562 in 2000 to 42 309 in 2001; SA World of Beer increased their numbers from 19 941 in 2000 to 24 432 in 2001. Not bad, 22% and 23% respectively AND even before Mary Fitzgerald Square was anywhere near completed! Not enough I agree but watch how these figures start to accelerate! Our Art City launch in Turbine Hall hosted 800 and the Food Court during WSSD attracted 6 000.The recent Joy of Jazz pulled in about 5 000 people each night of Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. A 'fashion commentator' who popped into my office on Wednesday summed up the situation when he told me about the differences between SA Fashion Week shows in Sandton and Newtown held last week. The former was attended by ‘hundreds’ and was at least an 80% white audience ("might as well have been held at Sandton Clinic") – the latter pulled in a totally mixed audience of 3 500 over the week and "really pumped!" He said that there was no better fashion venue in the Metropolitan area than Newtown's Turbine Hall!
Those who are not regular 'users' of the Inner City either as a workplace or socially/ culturally, generally have skewed perceptions of it.
Some years ago I was asked to assist in raising funds for the inner city’s CCTV programme by doing a presentation to property developers and owners in the North – at question time I was asked why on earth I thought that the city needed CCTV – “after all, no one goes there!” I suggested that the questioner might just be excluding the 800 000 who come into the city daily! A couple of months ago I was asked to do a presentation on regeneration in the city to an all male 'black-tie' supper group who meet monthly at the Inanda Club. Interesting that the dinner dress was the only presence of 'black' - other than the highly interested waiters! Apart from them, the group was arrogant, rude and totally dismissive of any attempts to regenerate the city.
On the other hand, two positive inputs at the Cope Housing Association’s Annual General Meeting earlier this week. Both related to addresses, one made by Graeme Reid (CEO of the Johannesburg Development Agency) and the other by Jill Turnbull the acting General Manager of the host organisation. (Jill has stepped into the large void left by the recent tragic death of Sipho Simelane which has greatly saddened all of us who were fortunate to have known him). As I listened to Jill talk about Cope’s achievements I was once again struck by the huge level of commitment and personal dedication of so many people to the huge task of what Graeme earlier succinctly called “the opportunity to re-shape the geography of the apartheid city”. Graeme went on to talk about 'livability' by focusing on the changes in the housing environment from the early ‘90s. That was a time when it was totally unstable, characterised by abandoned buildings, hostility and a lack of trust between landlords and tenants, rent boycotts, invasions and a breakdown in the management of the public environment. Compounding this situation was a 25% increase in population (as the previous regime's social engineering failed) but with no increase in stock. Today the situation, still difficult admittedly, has stabilised considerably. 5% of all housing stock now falls under social housing management (0% prior to 1994!). An estimated R30 million in new private sector investment has been made in the non-subsidised housing market in the inner city. New players are entering the housing market bringing strong and sound management and a new focus on by-law enforcement (evidenced by the recent forced closure of the notorious Sands Hotel).
There is a fresh sense of urgency on the promotion of middle income housing to create sustainable neighbourhoods and to complement other developments in the city and a vision to ensure a quality of life for inner city citizens comparable with other cities with green lungs, open spaces leisure, recreational and cultural activities. But there is also an acceptance that a major effort is needed with some innovative solutions to ensure that the poor is not excluded in the process, lest we perpetuate apartheid geography.
Companies such as Cope and the Johannesburg Housing Company don’t merely offer accommodation (often to people who have been at the mercy of slumlords for years). They provide real empowerment through a wide range of training and development and social interaction. They offer livability, they offer pride and they offer hope!
I believe that the city is far more livable for everyone than it has been for the past decade and for the overwhelming majority of our citizens it is better than it has ever been!
So what's with Sao Paulo? Next week!
Cheers, neil.
INNER CITY LIVABILITY, WHY DON’T WE RATHER TRY SAO PAULO?
Been thinking a lot lately about inner city livability sparked off by a number of articles and events.
The first article was one that appeared in the August edition of ‘Planning’ which provided an interesting and useful overview of city livability in European cities. Whilst it doesn't draw comparisons to any South African cities it ends with a statement that "It is indeed possible to build compact, livable cities."
The second was an editorial ‘Comment’ in the August edition of ‘Building Africa’ (also a really worthwhile magazine) which raised the question of the impact of the various projects underway in the inner city on “the revitalisation of the city and whether it will, in fact, make Johannesburg into a livable, user friendly city again.” Good question and we should welcome the raising of interest levels regarding the Inner City. However the writer raises her doubts against three of her own experiences. 1. Of a trendy Hillbrow in the ‘70s, (Hillbrow and CBD streets "crowded with people of all races and everybody having fun") plus, 2, concepts to achieve livable cities presented at the recent Built Environment Professions Convention by ‘distinguished local and international architects and urban designers’ and, finally, 3, a recent trip to Paris. I would strongly query these as a legitimate base. Yes, Hillbrow of the seventies was trendy and its and the CBD streets may have been crowded with people but the crowds did not reflect the demographics of the country as they proudly do today and certainly not everybody was having fun as claimed. The vast majority of our local population were as sure as hell not having fun in the seventies.
The writer goes on to ask ”How many intrepid tourists will be brave enough to venture into Newtown?….How many Johannesburgers will be brave enough to do so? Not any of our rainbow colours are at present encouraged to spend a Sunday afternoon in Newtown….” Just as a matter of interest, and excluding current statistics lest I be accused of misleading because of any additional numbers through the WSSD, visitors to Museum Africa increased from 34 562 in 2000 to 42 309 in 2001; SA World of Beer increased their numbers from 19 941 in 2000 to 24 432 in 2001. Not bad, 22% and 23% respectively AND even before Mary Fitzgerald Square was anywhere near completed! Not enough I agree but watch how these figures start to accelerate! Our Art City launch in Turbine Hall hosted 800 and the Food Court during WSSD attracted 6 000.The recent Joy of Jazz pulled in about 5 000 people each night of Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. A 'fashion commentator' who popped into my office on Wednesday summed up the situation when he told me about the differences between SA Fashion Week shows in Sandton and Newtown held last week. The former was attended by ‘hundreds’ and was at least an 80% white audience ("might as well have been held at Sandton Clinic") – the latter pulled in a totally mixed audience of 3 500 over the week and "really pumped!" He said that there was no better fashion venue in the Metropolitan area than Newtown's Turbine Hall!
Those who are not regular 'users' of the Inner City either as a workplace or socially/ culturally, generally have skewed perceptions of it.
Some years ago I was asked to assist in raising funds for the inner city’s CCTV programme by doing a presentation to property developers and owners in the North – at question time I was asked why on earth I thought that the city needed CCTV – “after all, no one goes there!” I suggested that the questioner might just be excluding the 800 000 who come into the city daily! A couple of months ago I was asked to do a presentation on regeneration in the city to an all male 'black-tie' supper group who meet monthly at the Inanda Club. Interesting that the dinner dress was the only presence of 'black' - other than the highly interested waiters! Apart from them, the group was arrogant, rude and totally dismissive of any attempts to regenerate the city.
On the other hand, two positive inputs at the Cope Housing Association’s Annual General Meeting earlier this week. Both related to addresses, one made by Graeme Reid (CEO of the Johannesburg Development Agency) and the other by Jill Turnbull the acting General Manager of the host organisation. (Jill has stepped into the large void left by the recent tragic death of Sipho Simelane which has greatly saddened all of us who were fortunate to have known him). As I listened to Jill talk about Cope’s achievements I was once again struck by the huge level of commitment and personal dedication of so many people to the huge task of what Graeme earlier succinctly called “the opportunity to re-shape the geography of the apartheid city”. Graeme went on to talk about 'livability' by focusing on the changes in the housing environment from the early ‘90s. That was a time when it was totally unstable, characterised by abandoned buildings, hostility and a lack of trust between landlords and tenants, rent boycotts, invasions and a breakdown in the management of the public environment. Compounding this situation was a 25% increase in population (as the previous regime's social engineering failed) but with no increase in stock. Today the situation, still difficult admittedly, has stabilised considerably. 5% of all housing stock now falls under social housing management (0% prior to 1994!). An estimated R30 million in new private sector investment has been made in the non-subsidised housing market in the inner city. New players are entering the housing market bringing strong and sound management and a new focus on by-law enforcement (evidenced by the recent forced closure of the notorious Sands Hotel).
There is a fresh sense of urgency on the promotion of middle income housing to create sustainable neighbourhoods and to complement other developments in the city and a vision to ensure a quality of life for inner city citizens comparable with other cities with green lungs, open spaces leisure, recreational and cultural activities. But there is also an acceptance that a major effort is needed with some innovative solutions to ensure that the poor is not excluded in the process, lest we perpetuate apartheid geography.
Companies such as Cope and the Johannesburg Housing Company don’t merely offer accommodation (often to people who have been at the mercy of slumlords for years). They provide real empowerment through a wide range of training and development and social interaction. They offer livability, they offer pride and they offer hope!
I believe that the city is far more livable for everyone than it has been for the past decade and for the overwhelming majority of our citizens it is better than it has ever been!
So what's with Sao Paulo? Next week!
Cheers, neil.
Friday, September 13, 2002
Rissik Street Post Office Citichat 13 September 2002
CITICHAT 36/2002 - 13 September 2002
Rissik Street Post Office
The good news is that a small task force has been appointed to look at the refurbishment of and possible uses for the rapidly decaying Rissik Street Post Office. The bad news is that it is not just the clock that has been stolen (Citichat 28 of 19 July 2002) but that everything of value has been systematically pilfered, from brass window fittings and door handles to even some of the wooden flooring and stair balustrades. Whilst the latter has probably been used for firewood, the former must surely have been sold to antique dealers. Sounds like a great opportunity for Carte Blanche to do another expose through their excellent investigative reporting which doesn’t merely end in the perpetrators being apprehended and unscrupulous merchants being exposed, but a greater awareness of these types of crimes being being nationally aired. And then it is also not just that parts of the building have been stolen, I believe that even the plans of the building were removed from the city council by someone who claims to have saved them from the incinerator in the 1970's!
When Cape Town was in its initial establishment phase (mid-to late-1600s) post office ‘stones’ and trees under which letters were left for collection and/or onward movement, Johannesburg’s postal service two centuries later started through the appointment of A.B.Edgson as the first postal agent for the city. He kept a canteen in Ferreira’s Camp and the post was kept, appropriately enough for a mining city, in a gin box! Towards the end of 1886 postal services were introduced three times a week. The addressee’s names were read out from an open window and the public claimed their post! At the end of the first year of this service there were 10 000 unclaimed letters (130 being for the Smith Family!).
In 1888 a single storey government building was erected on the site of the current building and the post office relocated from Ferreira’s Camp into a wing of this new building. The first pillar boxes were erected in 1889 and the first house-to-house deliveries started in 1896 however these were stopped when the Volksraad refused to approve funds to cover the cost of deliveries. In 1887 the first telegraph service was instituted. In 1892 the entire building was made available to the postal services but in 1895 it was vacated so that the building could be demolished whilst the new Post Office was erected. During that time the Post Office relocated to the Goldreich Building in Joubert Street between Fox and Commissioner.
The new three storey building was designed by Sytze Wierda, the state architect for the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR) and construction started in 1896. The contractor was NCA Meischke and the contract price sixty five thousand pounds. Meischke also later built the City Hall directly opposite and to the west of the Post Office.(The building next door to our own building, 90 Market Street, is known as Meische’s Building and, rumour has it, was built from materials surreptitiously dropped off delivery wagons as they rode down Maeket Street to the two building sites!) The corner-stone of the Post office building was laid by the then Postmaster I.N.van Alphen on the 27th February 1897 and the building opened to the public on 1 July 1898. Chipkin’s “Johannesburg Style” reflects the following: “The ZAR architecture of Johannesburg, originally part of the public works programme carried out by a reluctant Boer government, possesses a fascination deriving from its sound architectural qualities as well as from its archeological remoteness. The most prominent example was the Rissik Street Post Office , a wide three storey edifice , which defined the eastern perimeter of the vast Market Square like a nineteenth century version of the Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome.
Sytze Wierda, a Hollander, was the engineer-architect who, as head of the Public Works Department “interpreted President Paul Kruger’s “vision of the new Republic”. Wierda’s major work is at the Raadsaal (1890) and the Palace of Justice (!897) both in Pretoria and at the Post Office in Johannesburg. Wierda’s monumental style was Renaissance in context, Francophile in derivation but understandably Netherlandish and north-western European flavour, and formed part of an unacknowledged yet persistent Europeanising process on the Highveld looking not to Victorian England for inspiration but to the nation states of the Continent.” “The routine ZAR buildings designed by the Public Works Department under Sytze Wierda were distinguished by their Dutchness embodying the strong Hollands influence and discipline operating within the Kruger administration in the last decades of he nineteenth century. These facebrick constructions revealed in their details – decorative walling insets, triangular gable forms with Flemish strapwork and pinnacle elaboration, French roof silhouettes – an understated nineteenth century Gothic Provenance. In essence they were good honest brick statements of intent whose modernity derived from underlying Arts and Crafts modes of production.”
After the War and the resultant end of the Transvaal Republic, the accession of King Edward VII in 1902 was commemorated by the addition of a fourth storey to the building. This was on the instructions of the newly appointed Governor of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, Lord Milner. The English architect Wilfred Tonkin was responsible for the design of the new floor and of the clock tower marked with the cypher “E.R.” Arnold Benjamin, “A Lost Johannesburg” wrote of the additions, “Yet the structure familiar to Johannesburgers of today is substantially different from the original 1897 version. The addition of an extra storey in 1905 badly spoiled its looks….that addition unfortunately destroyed the original proportions and replaced the charming variation of the roof line with one that was straight and functional, dominated by a heavy clock tower (and a large square watertank!).”
Many years later an article stated; “Besides the Old fort in Kotze Street, the Rissik street post Office is the only remaining structure of importance built in Johannesburg by the government of the South African Republic. Historically and stylistically it is interestingly counterbalanced by the City hall Complex and together these two buildings also form one of the most important building complexes in the city.”
In 1940 an agreement was entered into between the national government and the city council to the effect that ownership of the land would be transferred to the council and that the government would be responsible for demolishing the building. As a result of strong preservation voices, the Council waived this clause in 1976 and the building was declared a National Monument in 1978. The responsibility for the maintenance of the building remained that of the Post Office in terms of the long term lease agreement which was now entered into between the Post Office and the City. The ‘rental’ was R49 per year! The Post Office despite requests, instructions and threats of court action never fulfilled its obligations in regard to maintenance and the building deteriorated from year to year. In 1993 an editorial in the Star said: “For Johannesburg to think it is worthy or capable of hosting any prestige event, let alone the Olympic Games, is laughable!…..Have a good look at that National Monument, the Rissik Street Post Office. It is literally falling to pieces….instead of being a monument to the past, it is a national disgrace.” Well, the Star was again wrong, this time on one count as the hosting of the World Summit has proved!
In 1994 the Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) proposed to the Provincial Government that it relocate from Pretoria to Johannesburg. Two of the city’s buildings which could be utilised by the Provincial Government were identified as the City Hall building which could be altered to house the Provincial Legislature and the Rissik Street Post Office which could be refurbished for the offices of the Premier. Although the City would make the latter building available, it was not in a position to finance the restoration. A private sector consortium was put together by the CJP, the finance raised and a lease deal offered to the Provincial Government. I have never been able to determine exactly why the deal, at a very advanced stage, was turned down although I have heard that there were ‘political pressures’ brought to bear, whatever that might mean! Before the deal was scuppered, the negotiation with the Post Office to cancel their lease and vacate the building had been completed. The deal included a payment to the Council of R3.5 million in compensation for the lack of maintenance that had led to the poor exterior state of the building at that time. The money was never spent.
In 1988 the Council (in the form of the Southern Metropolitan Local Council) called for proposals for the future use of the building. The Council accepted a Malaysian property developer’s proposal to turn the building into a “five star boutique hotel” at a cost of R35 million. A number of people, including myself, were highly sceptical of the proposal as well as of the feasibility of turning the building into a hotel at that cost. At one meeting with council, I was told that I was just being negative! The deal did nothing other than to block all other possibilities for a number of years and was finally cancelled fairly recently.
The building has thus stood empty since 1995 and continues to decay, its demise assisted by vagrants and profiteers as the building has been stripped unhindered over the years. At last a serious attempt is underway to determine the best possible use for the building and the accurate cost of bringing it back into service. Currently it stands as evidence of much bureaucratic bumbling, hopefully the Executive Mayor’s inner city prioritisation is going to change all that and it may again take its place as one of the city’s icons and symbols to its divergent past.
Cheers, neil
Rissik Street Post Office
The good news is that a small task force has been appointed to look at the refurbishment of and possible uses for the rapidly decaying Rissik Street Post Office. The bad news is that it is not just the clock that has been stolen (Citichat 28 of 19 July 2002) but that everything of value has been systematically pilfered, from brass window fittings and door handles to even some of the wooden flooring and stair balustrades. Whilst the latter has probably been used for firewood, the former must surely have been sold to antique dealers. Sounds like a great opportunity for Carte Blanche to do another expose through their excellent investigative reporting which doesn’t merely end in the perpetrators being apprehended and unscrupulous merchants being exposed, but a greater awareness of these types of crimes being being nationally aired. And then it is also not just that parts of the building have been stolen, I believe that even the plans of the building were removed from the city council by someone who claims to have saved them from the incinerator in the 1970's!
When Cape Town was in its initial establishment phase (mid-to late-1600s) post office ‘stones’ and trees under which letters were left for collection and/or onward movement, Johannesburg’s postal service two centuries later started through the appointment of A.B.Edgson as the first postal agent for the city. He kept a canteen in Ferreira’s Camp and the post was kept, appropriately enough for a mining city, in a gin box! Towards the end of 1886 postal services were introduced three times a week. The addressee’s names were read out from an open window and the public claimed their post! At the end of the first year of this service there were 10 000 unclaimed letters (130 being for the Smith Family!).
In 1888 a single storey government building was erected on the site of the current building and the post office relocated from Ferreira’s Camp into a wing of this new building. The first pillar boxes were erected in 1889 and the first house-to-house deliveries started in 1896 however these were stopped when the Volksraad refused to approve funds to cover the cost of deliveries. In 1887 the first telegraph service was instituted. In 1892 the entire building was made available to the postal services but in 1895 it was vacated so that the building could be demolished whilst the new Post Office was erected. During that time the Post Office relocated to the Goldreich Building in Joubert Street between Fox and Commissioner.
The new three storey building was designed by Sytze Wierda, the state architect for the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR) and construction started in 1896. The contractor was NCA Meischke and the contract price sixty five thousand pounds. Meischke also later built the City Hall directly opposite and to the west of the Post Office.(The building next door to our own building, 90 Market Street, is known as Meische’s Building and, rumour has it, was built from materials surreptitiously dropped off delivery wagons as they rode down Maeket Street to the two building sites!) The corner-stone of the Post office building was laid by the then Postmaster I.N.van Alphen on the 27th February 1897 and the building opened to the public on 1 July 1898. Chipkin’s “Johannesburg Style” reflects the following: “The ZAR architecture of Johannesburg, originally part of the public works programme carried out by a reluctant Boer government, possesses a fascination deriving from its sound architectural qualities as well as from its archeological remoteness. The most prominent example was the Rissik Street Post Office , a wide three storey edifice , which defined the eastern perimeter of the vast Market Square like a nineteenth century version of the Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome.
Sytze Wierda, a Hollander, was the engineer-architect who, as head of the Public Works Department “interpreted President Paul Kruger’s “vision of the new Republic”. Wierda’s major work is at the Raadsaal (1890) and the Palace of Justice (!897) both in Pretoria and at the Post Office in Johannesburg. Wierda’s monumental style was Renaissance in context, Francophile in derivation but understandably Netherlandish and north-western European flavour, and formed part of an unacknowledged yet persistent Europeanising process on the Highveld looking not to Victorian England for inspiration but to the nation states of the Continent.” “The routine ZAR buildings designed by the Public Works Department under Sytze Wierda were distinguished by their Dutchness embodying the strong Hollands influence and discipline operating within the Kruger administration in the last decades of he nineteenth century. These facebrick constructions revealed in their details – decorative walling insets, triangular gable forms with Flemish strapwork and pinnacle elaboration, French roof silhouettes – an understated nineteenth century Gothic Provenance. In essence they were good honest brick statements of intent whose modernity derived from underlying Arts and Crafts modes of production.”
After the War and the resultant end of the Transvaal Republic, the accession of King Edward VII in 1902 was commemorated by the addition of a fourth storey to the building. This was on the instructions of the newly appointed Governor of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, Lord Milner. The English architect Wilfred Tonkin was responsible for the design of the new floor and of the clock tower marked with the cypher “E.R.” Arnold Benjamin, “A Lost Johannesburg” wrote of the additions, “Yet the structure familiar to Johannesburgers of today is substantially different from the original 1897 version. The addition of an extra storey in 1905 badly spoiled its looks….that addition unfortunately destroyed the original proportions and replaced the charming variation of the roof line with one that was straight and functional, dominated by a heavy clock tower (and a large square watertank!).”
Many years later an article stated; “Besides the Old fort in Kotze Street, the Rissik street post Office is the only remaining structure of importance built in Johannesburg by the government of the South African Republic. Historically and stylistically it is interestingly counterbalanced by the City hall Complex and together these two buildings also form one of the most important building complexes in the city.”
In 1940 an agreement was entered into between the national government and the city council to the effect that ownership of the land would be transferred to the council and that the government would be responsible for demolishing the building. As a result of strong preservation voices, the Council waived this clause in 1976 and the building was declared a National Monument in 1978. The responsibility for the maintenance of the building remained that of the Post Office in terms of the long term lease agreement which was now entered into between the Post Office and the City. The ‘rental’ was R49 per year! The Post Office despite requests, instructions and threats of court action never fulfilled its obligations in regard to maintenance and the building deteriorated from year to year. In 1993 an editorial in the Star said: “For Johannesburg to think it is worthy or capable of hosting any prestige event, let alone the Olympic Games, is laughable!…..Have a good look at that National Monument, the Rissik Street Post Office. It is literally falling to pieces….instead of being a monument to the past, it is a national disgrace.” Well, the Star was again wrong, this time on one count as the hosting of the World Summit has proved!
In 1994 the Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) proposed to the Provincial Government that it relocate from Pretoria to Johannesburg. Two of the city’s buildings which could be utilised by the Provincial Government were identified as the City Hall building which could be altered to house the Provincial Legislature and the Rissik Street Post Office which could be refurbished for the offices of the Premier. Although the City would make the latter building available, it was not in a position to finance the restoration. A private sector consortium was put together by the CJP, the finance raised and a lease deal offered to the Provincial Government. I have never been able to determine exactly why the deal, at a very advanced stage, was turned down although I have heard that there were ‘political pressures’ brought to bear, whatever that might mean! Before the deal was scuppered, the negotiation with the Post Office to cancel their lease and vacate the building had been completed. The deal included a payment to the Council of R3.5 million in compensation for the lack of maintenance that had led to the poor exterior state of the building at that time. The money was never spent.
In 1988 the Council (in the form of the Southern Metropolitan Local Council) called for proposals for the future use of the building. The Council accepted a Malaysian property developer’s proposal to turn the building into a “five star boutique hotel” at a cost of R35 million. A number of people, including myself, were highly sceptical of the proposal as well as of the feasibility of turning the building into a hotel at that cost. At one meeting with council, I was told that I was just being negative! The deal did nothing other than to block all other possibilities for a number of years and was finally cancelled fairly recently.
The building has thus stood empty since 1995 and continues to decay, its demise assisted by vagrants and profiteers as the building has been stripped unhindered over the years. At last a serious attempt is underway to determine the best possible use for the building and the accurate cost of bringing it back into service. Currently it stands as evidence of much bureaucratic bumbling, hopefully the Executive Mayor’s inner city prioritisation is going to change all that and it may again take its place as one of the city’s icons and symbols to its divergent past.
Cheers, neil
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