Johannesburg the Segregated city

Residential development in Johannesburg

The first residential areas to develop in Johannesburg were located about around Church Square, soon to be renamed Government, and then Von Brandis Square, where the Mining Commissioner had his home. At that early stage the northern and eastern ends of Noord, De Villers, Plein, Bree, Jeppe and Kerk Streets were all populated by well-heeled homes, with a smattering of commercial buildings, mostly small family-run grocery stores. The area around Joubert Park attracted some of the town’s wealthiest citizens, and Hermann Eckstein, Lionel Phillips, Carl Hanau, Solly Joel and Edward Lippert all built their first homes in this neighbourhood.

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Before long, however, the town’s swirling dust storms and the interminable pounding of its stamp mills drove the more fastidious to move northwards, at first to the lower slopes of the Witwatersrand ridge, and then progressively over to its northern slopes, where winter temperatures could be up to four or five degrees warmer. The first residential townships to be developed there were Doornfontein in 1887, New Doornfontein and Bellevue in 1889, and Yeoville in 1891.

The first definitive moves over the ridge were made in 1892 when H Eckstein & Co purchased a stretch of farmland beyond Braamfontein for the purpose of establishing a plantation to supply timber to the mines. At about the same time, a residential township was laid out on the higher reaches of the property. Local folklore has it that Florence Phillips, wife of Sir Lionel, who was a director of the company, went out riding in the area one day and discovered it to have sweeping views reaching to the Magaliesberg. She was so taken with the site that she persuaded her husband to build their home upon it, naming it Hohenheim, German for ‘home on high’. Although some of their friends were openly sceptical, other families soon began to follow suit and within a brief time the suburb, named Parktown on 10 March 1893, had become the preferred residence of Johannesburg’s ‘smart’ set.

As a result, it became popular among the town’s wealthier entrepreneurial, financial and upper management classes, most particularly those associated with the mines. Among those who made their homes there were Sir Lionel Phillips, Alfred Beit, Col. J Dale Lace, Sir Thomas Cullinan and Sir Percy Fitzpatrick. During the Victorian and Edwardian eras they were responsible for the commission and construction of a number of fine homes, including several designed by Herbert Baker. These mansions were often enormous, numbering 20 rooms or more, and seemingly built with little consideration to expense. In some instances, the mining companies themselves commissioned their construction in order to provide their contract management with comfortable quarters. Many of these men were highly qualified mining specialists, attracted from America and England by promises of lucrative salaries and comfortable living conditions.

Thus they required additional incentives to remain in what was commonly regarded at the time as an unsophisticated mining village, endowed with a rudimentary infrastructure and few luxuries. As a result, the area gained for itself the reputation of being a home to the rich and the powerful. Unavoidably this image also carried political connotations and, during the labour struggles of the early twentieth century, it was regarded as a stronghold of capitalist and colonial values.

The establishment of other suburbs further afield soon followed, including Auckland Park and Berea in 1893, Rosebank in 1894, Oaklands in 1896, and Craighall in 1902. By 1910, most of Johannesburg’s northern suburbs had been proclaimed all the way to Linden, Illovo and Bramley, although it was not until the 1930s that they began to develop a distinct suburban character. Left to their own devices, Doornfontein and its neighbouring suburbs quietly subsided into middle class respectability, eventually giving way to working class families, and by the 1970s they had become the target for slum clearance and redevelopment.

The north-east corner of the CBD, on the other hand, was rapidly identified as an area for commercial expansion, and from the 1920s onwards its fine residences began to give way to warehousing and small manufacture. Because of its proximity to the town’s first two synagogues, this area also became the focus for its clothing and textile trade, which was dominated by the Jewish community.

What marked many of these townships from their predecessors was the inclusion of measures in their title deeds which precluded the subdivision of land into smaller lots and, unless otherwise designated, their use for anything other than residential functions. Attempts to develop similar suburbs south of the mine belt, such as Turffontein and Rosettenville in 1889, and La Rochelle in 1895, failed to attract a high income clientele, and these areas soon developed a distinct working class flavour.

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