Title: Hidden Johannesburg
Author: Paul Duncan
Photographer: Alain Proust
Publisher: Struik Lifestyle/Penguin Random House
ISBN:9781770079922
Date: 2016
Books like this do not just appear. Nor are there many around like them. They take a great deal of dreaming up, conceptualising and hard work; and then, some planned ones might never see the light of day. Hidden Johannesburg contains 28 culturally significant buildings tucked away somewhere in the Johannesburg landscape.
The photographs are by internationally acclaimed photographer Alain Proust. The text is by former editorial director at Condé Nast Independent Magazines, Paul Duncan, whose remit included Casa Vogue Italy and Spain. Although he followed a career in fine art, his eye is clearly that of the architect. Articles from Duncan’s pen feature interiors, lifestyle, design and buildings, and not just in South Africa. Many have been published in the United Kingdom in The Independent, The Sunday Times and The Evening Standard.
Alain Proust remains one of South Africa’s leading photographers. Born in France, he now lives in South Africa. While the topics of his work range from food and wine to landscapes and nature, architecture and the built environment feature as strongly as any. The two, Duncan and Proust, are responsible for Hidden Cape Town (2016), and now Hidden Johannesburg (2016), while Proust and Johan Swart published Hidden Pretoria (2019).
Reading Hidden Johannesburg will reveal how two highly experienced artists present some of Johannesburg’s architectural gems. Perhaps the following from the introduction will make one realise how specialised it is getting a book like this together:
One wet afternoon, I let myself into the City Hall through a side door and had a free run of the interior all alone. Not a soul challenged me as I wandered about from room to room and up a circuitous staircase with porthole windows and attics. While much of it is what you would expect of a civic place that popped up virtually overnight, and which has seen better days, there were some genuine surprises, like two Louis XV-style “salons” lined with painted panelling and looking-glass on either side of the oval, mosaic-floor atrium linked to the foyer. How beautiful they were, even in their slightly dog-eared state. And how unexpected, even though they had been painted an unpleasant municipal green. And what about the foyer itself!
The first of the buildings that feature is St John’s College, an Anglican school in Houghton, Johannesburg, established in 1898.
While the photographs are very beautiful, there is a serious omission. The college’s pièce de résistance could be considered the total facade viewed from the bottom of the valley. From there, one looks up to see what must surely rank as one of the most majestic views of any educational establishment in the world! But the photograph of the school’s library in the book brings a tear to one’s eye as the world goes digital and some schools are changing from libraries to resource centres. Appropriately, the next chapter is “The view”: the mansion of Sir Thomas Cullinan, the founder of St John’s College.
From Houghton and Parktown North, the next chapter takes the reader to the suburb of Victory Park, to Road No 3, featuring St Charles Borromeo. Here is a little bit of Milanese history in the heart of Joseys. Seemingly unattractive from the outside in “lemon squeezer” style, the inside is a feast to the eye, “a virtuoso performance of theatrical ingenuity”. One can imagine the “Ave Maria” resounding through the 24 precast arches, past the altar on raised predella of rose-pink marble from Portugal.
It is unlikely that the church was designed exactly after Archbishop Carlo Borromeo’s Duomo in Milan, but the likelihood that it is named after him surely exists, given the link with Frederick Gibberd’s Metropolitan Cathedral, completed in 1967 for the Archdiocese of Liverpool and its population of Irish Catholics – although jeered at as Paddy’s Wigwam. Should the reader pass through Milan, a visit to the vault (scurolo) where Archbishop Borromeo lies would certainly be worth a visit. Click here to view it, and for a plan of Milan’s cathedral, click here.
In Killarney, on the Johannesburg flatlands, Gleneagles is a reminder to many residents of their first abode: a flat. Blocks of flats such as this attracted upper middle-class society to Killarney. Architects JC Cook and Cowen pace-set their design in the palace-like facade, austere foyer and symmetry. Further in the book is another building of flats and apartments in Killarney, called Whitehall Court, on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 4th Street. Originally the offices of the American entrepreneur Isidore Williem Schlesinger, today they are luxury apartments. To follow up with some interesting reading about stylish living in Johannesburg, go to The heritage portal.
Chosen as the book’s front cover is Johannesburg’s Park Station, completed in 1932, the destination for millions of South Africans, especially until a new form of transport prevailed – air travel. Imagine the majesty and splendour of this edifice in its heyday, with its 32 panels painted by South African artist JH Pierneef, now curated in the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch. Sadly, the original buildings are in a state of decay – Ozymandias in the desert? Nor is the building free from its own political history, as in 1964 this was the venue where John Harris of the African Resistance Movement planted a bomb on the whites-only platform in protest of apartheid. Several commuters were injured and one life lost, for which Harris received the death sentence. His hanging on 1 April of that year was prologued by the incantation of the civil rights movement protest song, “We shall overcome”. Click here to view the panels.
Dating from 1904 is Herbert Baker’s St George’s Anglican Church in Sherborne Road, Parktown; his partners, Francis Masey and Frank Fleming, were also involved in its design. It was used by the Randlords at the time it was built, and its ascetic interior is shadowy, almost as if the architects set the worshippers apart for themselves from the hustle and bustle of everyone else in burgeoning Egoli (the City of Gold).
A rather peculiar chapter feature is the L Ron Hubbard House, situated on Linksfield Ridge. Intriguing is the interior, especially as the resident was one who lived a cloistered life. The house has beautiful spaces, one minute rich in wooden panels, the next minute having slate tiles, and the next, red leather-covered seating spaces. It was Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (nom de plume L Ron Hubbard) who turned from writer of pulp fiction to dianetics (the modern science of mental health) and inaugurated the Church of Scientology, a controversial religious movement of the fifties.
Hubbard saw his house in Johannesburg as instrumental in the development of scientology. For more on Hubbard, do not miss a fascinating documentary/feature film called Secret lives (1977) about the creator of dianetics and scientology.
Edoardo Villa could be considered one of South Africa’s foremost sculptors. His house features as a rough-cast, brutal design by Villa’s friend Ian McLennan, little-known South African architect. Warren Siebrits, writer and art collector, owns it now, having purchased it after Villa died at age 95. True to its current owner, its architect and Villa himself, the house sits on a secluded site on an anonymous road, surrounded by indigenous and sculptural plants and trees. Perhaps the dictum, “True learning is to hide learning” (scientia est celare scientiam) (adapted from ars est celare artem – the art is in concealing the art), cannot be truer. Today, Villa’s art is sought after; see it here.
Part of the architectural Modern Movement is the Freemasons’ Hall in Park Lane, Parktown (although actually closer to the metropolis of Hillbrow). It is a building of the fifties designed by Gordon Leith. Very daunting is its grand staircase. It shows anyone entering that this place means business!
Next is the mansion Northwards. History was made when Sir Herbert Baker designed and built this, the first of many he built for mining magnates in Johannesburg. Here is a fascinating account and history of this building.
No book on the gems of Johannesburg would be complete without the Nelson Mandela House on Vilakazi Street. Where else would one find the homes of the two Nobel Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the same street, but in Vilakazi Street, Orlando West, in Soweto in Johannesburg? Mandela lived here from 1946 until he was arrested and imprisoned for 27 years. Take the tour to learn more of one of the world’s leading civil rights leaders and see the house he lived in.
Venturing a little further from the city centre, the book takes us to the Old Pretoria Road in Midrand, to the Nizamiye Masjid. The architecture and interior resemble some of the old mosques in the city of Istanbul.
Yet further afield, in Boksburg, is St Michael and All Angels, a church in the Romanesque style, not uncommon for churches built in South Africa then. Stone and wood were strong elements in Sir Herbert Baker’s designs for churches, as in the English Arts and Crafts Movement inspired by John Ruskin. The interior is devoid of decoration, save the stained glass windows. Rather strange is one of them depicting General Gordon, renowned for his military service in the Crimean War as well as in Khartoum in the Sudan.
The Anglo American head office, aka 44 Main Street, probably ranks as one of the “best” business addresses in the Western world. It was here that Ernest Oppenheimer founded Anglo American, today Anglo American plc, a British multinational mining company with its HQ in London, headed by Bruce Cleaver. But 44 Main Street remains Anglo American’s HQ in Africa and a significant landmark on the Johannesburg landscape.
Satyagraha House in Pine Road, Orchards, was the home of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (referred to in the book as Mahatma, which is a title and not a name). The name of the house is after the method of passive resistance, or “soul force”, galvanised by discriminatory laws aimed at Indian males living in the Transvaal (today Gauteng), requiring them to register and have thumbprints taken, not required for white males at that time. The house is decorated to reflect Gandhi’s asceticism. To learn more about Gandhi’s philosophy called satyagraha, click here, and here for a virtual tour of the house.
Today, in Bedfordview, it is called St Andrew’s School for Girls, but its real name is Bedford Court, a Sir Herbert Baker house designed for George Farrar (subsequently knighted, to become known as Sir George Farrar). Farrar was renowned for establishing the East Rand Property Mines in 1893. He died from injuries sustained in a railway accident in German South West Africa (today Namibia) during WWI. Today, the home is the site of St Andrew’s.
The Old Fort in Kotze Street, Braamfontein, has a harrowing past, where the inmates were brutally treated. Some of the country’s most “prominent political prisoners” were housed there, as were persons contravening petty colonial or apartheid legislation. Gandhi himself was a prisoner there in 1908 for being in defiance of the law that required him to carry a pass. Mineworkers striking in 1913 were imprisoned there, as were those miners from the 1922 Rand Revolt. Others imprisoned there include Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Chief Albert Luthuli (1960). Find the latter’s bibliography here.
Downtown Johannesburg is filled with interesting buildings, not least the Lions Shul in Harrow Road, Doornfontein. The two cast-iron Lion of Judah statues give the place its name. Built in 1906, it remains a synagogue with a vibrant congregation. War-torn Europe at the time saw many flee from the ravages of race absolutism, including Jews who came to South Africa to seek their fortune. The history of the Doornfontein Synagogue (Lions Shul) is an epic novel to be written in itself of the stories of immigrant strangers experiencing social and economic hardship as they came to Johannesburg to find their new home and build their lives in this community.
Back to the suburbs, this time to Louis Botha Avenue in Orange Grove: Radium Beer Hall is Johannesburg’s oldest surviving public bar, with an interesting and colourful history.
One with a passion for arts and crafts was Florence Phillips, the wife of Lionel Phillips – later to become Sir Lionel Phillips – mining magnate and politician. This is seen from her Italianate mansion, which took 18 months to build. Designed by Herbert Baker, it is said that this was his trial run before the Union Buildings! Read how the home was saved from destruction.
Glenshiel in Woolston Road, Westcliff, another mansion by Baker, designed in 1908, was the last of Baker and Fleming’s big Johannesburg houses (read more about its history). Built by Barrow Construction, renowned for their master projects such as St John’s College, it remains one of the city’s great and majestic historical homes from that era.
Nearing the end of the book, further gems emerge in more of Johannesburg’s buildings. The Holy Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helen (the Greek Orthodox Cathedral) in Wolmarans Street, Hillbrow, is in Byzantine style, with an iconostasis (screen) separating the nave from the sanctuary, and with a central dome, which was this style’s prevailing motif. Looking at the photographs of the cathedral is like moving through an art gallery, so rich are the decorative panels and artistic features. It was in 1907 that Johannesburg’s Greek community initiated a fundraising campaign to construct the community’s own site for worship, thus ending decades of sharing venues with churches such as the Anglicans.
Not far away, in Nugget Street, Doornfontein, is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Christ the King, a modernist basilica consecrated in 1960. One of the cathedral’s main features is its stained glass windows, the work of Patrick Pollen (1928–2010).
In the city centre, two gems are the Rand Club and the City Hall in Rissik Street. The club is referred to “as one of the greatest historical landmarks of old Johannesburg”, where “episodes in its history were at the centre of events that rocked the nascent city”. The club began in 1887, the year after Johannesburg started as a mining city. Today, as many similar “clubs” try to survive by making their venues relevant, they face the challenge of making ends meet through subscriptions. The late Edwardian-styled City Hall, designed by William Hawke and William McKinlay, is today cited as one of their grandest designs, along with the former University of the Cape of Good Hope building in Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town, today known as the Centre for the Book. Not surprisingly, Duncan and Proust devote no less than 12 pages to the Johannesburg City Hall and its structure and interior. Talking of Rissik Street (named after Johann Rissik, the surveyor general of the South African Republic, later known as the Transvaal, today Gauteng), a potential gem for inclusion is the Alexis Preller panels in the SARS building at 4 Rissik Street. Duncan explains that he attempted to view them, but the mission failed due to strict security. Nor could he be altogether sure that they were still there – perhaps they have been sold. The image included below is one of the many panels that were commissioned for the building when it opened in the 1950s.
No book of Johannesburg would be complete without the art deco style/movement. Anstey’s was once the place to shop. Anstey’s Building on Joubert Street was once the tallest building in Africa. It is a suitable example of “the opulence and bravado of commerce that topped the peak of the gold rush”. Emley & Williamson were the architects. They designed several of Johannesburg’s most notable buildings, such as the Central Block at Wits. In the art deco style of architecture that was prominent prior to WWII in cities such as New York and Johannesburg, Anstey’s faced demolition in 1989; however, it was saved and today has long-term apartments. For a “then and now” view and to see the building by geolocation, clik here.
Duncan and Proust have compiled a magnificent book, a feast for the eye. In it, they have captured numerous buildings, each with its own intriguing story – Proust with the magical eye to reflect each building as a place of interest and draw in the beholder, Duncan with the graphic textual detail. Duncan explains his choices, as well as those buildings he would have liked to include, not least the Pierneefs in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, and the Prellers in the SARS building. But you cannot do everything. As Duncan says:
Johannesburg has been in a constant state of reinvention as long as it’s been in existence. And that is the old, mesmerizing, infuriating thing about it. Frustrating and heartening in equal measure, from mining camp to instantaneous city in less than 20 years, it has always pretended to be cosmopolitan. And while money and business have migrated out of the CBD, transforming yet more chunks of veld into suburbs and satellite cities, there is much that has survived here and is waiting to be rediscovered. To take on a second life, to start over.
Does that mean a Hidden Johannesburg Volume 2?