Rugby Overshadowed One Evening, but We Ladies Fed the Giraffe

NEWSLETTER NO 5OCTOBER 2013

Dear Members,

Back from a most interesting and very happy tour to Bloemfontein I should be refreshed and ready to go. I am somewhat envious of the fact that Bloemfontein’s old buildings are still standing in lovely green garden settings (the water bills must be huge!) and the streets are clean, the parks are full of people and NO LITTER! Most exciting of all was to find that the War Museum of the Boer Republics has new insights and expresses the view that war is horrible for all those involved. We really need to spread that view more widely. The Quakers list war as the most devastating environmental disaster in addition to being a human catastrophe.

But the tour was not overshadowed by war. We did take in a few cemeteries because so much of the history is written in the cemeteries, but we also visited the Orchid House and admired the old school buildings – Grey College, Oranje Meisies and lunched at The Ramblers which has recently been restored. They had to sell the cricket field to pay for it. We would cheerfully exchange the sportsfields for the old buildingsand they still have two bowling greens and a view of the new development.

Rugby overshadowed one evening, but we ladies fed the giraffe.

The next tour won’t have the giraffe, but they will enjoy a more comfortable hotel with lifts and porters…. And in the middle of town for those who like walking. Incidentally we did see statues of quite a few old Presidents and even Prime Minister Hertzog– memorable because it was he who gave white women the vote.

We ended on a high note (literally for those who climbed the steeple) visiting the Winburg’s sandstone Dutch Reformed Church. It is alovely Gothic building designed by Johannesburg architects, the brothers Till. Huge Thanks to Daviud Forrest who is incredibly patient and charming to everyone and to his wife Gwyn who specialises in ensuring good pit stops. One day Gwyn will write a Guide to the Toilets of South Africaand her fan club will queue to pay homage.(There are a few places left on the tour 11th-13th October so book now)

Back to business. First prize in this last quarter must go to Michael Fleming who diligently delves through the City’s collection of plans and puts them into numerical order and even back into the right township.It is a little frightening to learn how frequently he has to do this, but he does get rewarded by finding lovely drawings. Normandie Court the wonderful art deco block of flats appeared from somewhere in Plein Street. It had been filed under its leasehold numbers. Odd since those disappeared in the Twenties. He has also unearthed buildings designed by Wilhelm Pabst of which we were completely unaware. The dazzling warehouse in Durban Street is the greatest discovery.

The Research Centre is getting a bit above itself, blossoming with talent and ambition. Diana Steele is making our mark on Google Maps and we have finally handed over the data base for the centre of Johannesburg which was based on Johann Bruwer’s three reports commissioned by the City Council. Our task was to assess the buildings, complete the data base and hand it over for entering on the City’s GIS system. The assessments were done by a group under James Ball’s leadership and included Clare Eisenstein, Clare von Zwietan, Prue and myself. Creating the database was Prue’s task and involved downloading from the Johannesburg website the SG numbers and Ward numbers. Every now and then Prue’s eyes would pop out as she discovered Stuttafords listed in a residential street in Randburg. So what she has contributed is twofold – checking their SG numbers as well as getting our information onto the system. Township Johannesburg, Stand number, street address, name of building, original owner, architect, date of plans approval as well as recognition in the form of declaration, blue plaque or listing in the Johannesburg 100 list.

We hope lots of people will use it. We have converted it to Excel on our website which members might find easier to use. We have also handed it over to SAPOA since all the major property owners should also be happy at last to have a grading they can refer to.

We have continued with the survey starting at Stand number 1, working mainly in the east of town, but have finally overtaken the limits of the Bruwer report in the north. Bree street (little Ethiopia) Plein Street and Noord come next. We can’t really organise tours there because the space between the shops which overflow onto the pavement and the vendors who spread out reducing the footway further, is just too small for groups. But it is enormous fun. Very noisy, very colourful and while many buildings are in bad state there are some gems and people are friendly. They assume we are foreigners – rather a sad reflection really.

Restoration: Thanks to the Mackenzie Foundation St Mary-the-Less in Jeppestown was the first project. The gulleys have been fixed and new flashing inserted along the gable ends. We have to wait for the rains to discover if the work done really is waterproof, but meanwhile we are concerned about the downpipes which are residential not industrial. With the downpours we have been having these downpipes can’t cope and the water seeps back under the eaves and onto the ceilings. So unglamorous as that will be we feel we must do it soon because next year the church will be 125 years old and wanting to celebrate. It is the second oldest building in Johannesburg. The old police station in Bree Street beats it by a few months, but St Mary’s looks more decorously Victorian.

The Lutheran Church in Davies Street Doornfontein (south of the railway line) is looking so good. We paid for the parapet walls to be repaired (they had gaping cracks so water simply poured in) as well as the roof sheeting, new gutters and downpipes and repairs to the fascia boards. The Church is paying for the roofto be painted and also the walls and buttresses. It just needs its plaque now to proclaim its heritage significance.

Our school tours have been much appreciated by the schools we were able to invite and sponsor. I.H. Harris who allowed us in to park for the Doornfontein tour and who still have a wonderful school hall with its old honours boards showing the changing demographics from Jewish Government School to a largely Portuguese community’s primary school and more recently listing African namesexcelling insports and academically. Then City and Suburban Primary which is actually a private school funded by City Properties although it was originally a Government school. They hosted us for our tour of that neighbourhood and we were able to return the hospitality. BASA College is one of our favourites because they occupy and maintain the original Transvaal University College building in Eloff Street across the road from Park Station.

Janet Hughes has designed a new school tour taking in The View and the National Children’s Theatre. It concentrates on the applied arts so beautifully on display at The View – everything from tiles wallpaper, light fittings, friezes to hand- painted door panels. At the Theatre there is another great source – set designs, costumes, programmes and posters. We need the money to launch this one because the docents must be trained, worksheets be printed, trial runs conducted. So if you have the odd R7 000 to spare do think of us.

We have applied for funding to launch school tours in Newtown, but no word from the National Heritage Council for this. Silence also prevails from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund as well. The latter is no surprise since we hear they are still distributing the funds applied for in 2011.

Several members of the Board attended the Indaba on the National Heritage Liberation Route organised by the Portfolio Committee for Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture of the Legislature. So we are making a short submission on what we think is the best way of marking the routes and involving the community in what is really a most significant anniversary next year.

PHRAG has been very critical of us (the feeling is entirely mutual) and we were called in to be rapped over the knuckles for daring to demand that Imperial reconstruct the buildings on the Rand Steam Laundries along Napier Road. “Where do you fit into this Act” thundered the Director of the Department of Sports Recreation Arts and Culture waving the National Heritage Resources Act at William Gaul and me. We were pleased to remind them that we were acting in terms of the Gauteng Planning Act since PHRAG has done absolutely NOTHING about the Rand Steam Laundries for 5 years. Their sudden interest might just be due to someone’s having told the MEC about this failure to deal with the matter – downright dereliction of duty. So we got the blame!

PHRAG’s accusation is that we are holding up development. Their concern for Johannesburg’s heritage is non-existent. They have done absolutely nothing about the CNA building, Shakespeare House and New Kempsey. They haven’t even answered our application for the declaration of these properties. There isn’t space to list all the things they are supposed to do in terms of the National Heritage Resources Act and which they have failed to do in the last 10 years. I have never seen them produce a file at a meeting.

HERITAGE WEEKEND: We held this in the second week of September because we feared that if we included Heritage Day everyone would be away for a long weekend. It was all a bit rushed and we didn’t get as much support as we would have liked, but we pioneered new tours, our new tour leaders had great fun and proved informative and entertaining and we did enrol a number of new members. Thanks once again to Holy Family College where the tours all started and to Transman for sponsoring the buses which took us as far afield as Kliptown. Special thanks to Clare Eisenstein for producing the programme at incredibly short notice and to Nici and her marketing team who worked so hard to get the word out. The Job family did everything we could possibly ask – Ernest organised the public address on the buses and ensured everyone was dropped off and fetched at the righttimes, Winnie led tours and baked and iced delicious cupcakes which James sold along with hamburgers, bacon butties and boerewors rolls;Paul (an honorary Job he is really Frost) created the light panels which showed people what to expect on each of the 15 tours on offer, and his wife Julie handled the Announcements at the school. Their two daughters kept other small visitors enchanted.

Diana Steele and Val Hammerton held the fort selling tickets, advising people on tours they should choose, keeping an eye on the supply of paper handtowels and toilet rolls and ensuring the right signs went up for each tour to ensure people went on the right ones. Sarah Welhamand Mary Boyeasse sold books for two solid days - which Den and Winnie had been marking the week before. Many thanks to Jo Meintjies who gave us all Chris’s books for the sale. We sold out on the penguins I,.e books about penguins very quickly!

June to September have been very busy months for Eira who has booked so many tours, written so many minutes including the AGM. Thanks to Antoinette Murdoch, director of the Johannesburg Art Gallery and Zanele Ntuli of Hollard we were able to celebrate the150 anniversary of Florence Phillips birthday in very happy fashion. Everyone really loved the lightning tour of the Gallery, some of Florrie’s lace collection and of course also the tea Hollard gave us.

We still haven’t managed to register as an NPO under our new name. We have to find the original certificate we received in 1999. We applied for registration in1989. Things have certainly speeded up since then in the NPO sector of the Welfare Department. So if you finding Eira searching and searching you know why!

There are exciting tours ahead in the programme for the last quarter. The delay in issuing it is regretted, but please do join the ones that take your fancy.

Thank you for all your support on tours, in messages to the trust and for PAYING YOUR MEMBERSHIP FEES!

Warm regards,

Flo Bird