Oldest part of Johannesburg, Marshalltown, is planned

On 27 September 1886, Henry Brown Marshall asked Kidger Tucker to draw up a plan for a new residential area for Johannesburg. The plan was laid out in October 1886. Among the street names were Commissioner, Troye, Ferreira, Albert and Cornelius streets. During the first quarter of the same year Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.  The discovery of Gold in the town saw a vast number of fortune-seekers from all over the world flocking into Johannesburg. Initially, the officials of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republijk (ZAR), Johannes Meyer and Johannes Rissik, who worked in land surveying and mappingdid not believe that the gold would last for long, and mapped out a small triangular piece of land and filled it with as many plots as possible. This is why the roads in Johannesburg’s central business district (Marshalltown) are so narrow. Further reading: A History of Johannesburg