January 8, 2004
By Lucille Davie
THE Gauteng provincial government is moving into Joburg's CBD in a big way, and with bulldozers, it seems. Five downtown buildings are to be demolished, if the province gets its way.
The five buildings are: the New Library Hotel, People's Bank, the South African Reserve Bank House, Clegg House, all in Commissioner Street, and the Rand Water Board Building in Fraser Street. They're all within the same block, and a block away from Beyers Naude Square, between Market and Pritchard streets. The buildings will be demolished to create a square with gardens.
Clegg House already has a demolishers board pegged onto its first floor balcony.
The five buildings are all 60 years and older, and are therefore protected. The demolition applications will need to include an impact assessment, and those assessments will need to be submitted to the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), the national heritage protection body. This assessment report is due to be submitted to the agency by Friday, 9 January. It will then go to the agency's next committee meeting on 23 January for consideration.
The square will be part of what is called the provincial "government precinct". The province already owns the City Hall, and the precinct will centre around this historic building, consisting of 150 000 square metres of office space. According to Mbhazima Shilowa, Gauteng premier, the province is one of the city's biggest property owners.
The provincial government moved into the city in 1995 and has since been acquiring property. It occupies and has purchased 18 buildings, with no plans for further acquisitions. According to Shilowa's spokesperson, Thabo Masebe, the province has spent around R150-million on these acquisitions.
The precinct will stretch from Fox Street in the south to Pritchard Street in the north, Sauer Street in the west, through to Rissik Street in the east. It is expected that the square will be created between Sauer and Simmonds streets, south of Commissioner Street.
Masebe says he foresees "no obstacles in the way of the proposal unless there are strong reasons" not to go ahead with the demolitions.
Public objections or recommendations to the proposal may be submitted to SAHRA in writing by 4 February. The address is PO Box 87552, Houghton, 2041, or by fax on 011 482 8196, or by e-mail to Jennifer Kitto at jkitto@jhb.sahra.org.za.
A brief description of three of the five buildings:
The New Library Hotel, 67 Commissioner Street
This eight-storey building was completed in 1938 in the Early Modernist style. It underwent alterations in 1964, 1970 and 1979, both internal and external, so that, according to a 2002 Heritage Assessment Report commissioned by the City, the changes "have resulted in the external appearance of the building not having remained completely true to the original design". The report also says that "the building contributes very little to its environment, besides the fact that its height matches that of the adjacent Rand Water Board Building. The enclosed verandah is a disrupting element in the Market Streetscape".
The Rand Water Board Building, 3 Fraser Street
This building in polished red granite of six and a half storeys (originally four) was built in 1941 and designed by Gordon Leith, in a combination of Italian Renaissance and modern classicism style, according to architect Clive Chipkin in his
Johannesburg Style, Architecture and Society, 1880s-1960s. Chipkin says that although Leith was critical of the building, Chipkin regards it "as a major statement of street architecture, unsurpassed in the Johannesburg townscape". The assessment report states that the former National Monuments Council (now SAHRA) says that the building is a "finely proportioned and well-detailed building of outstanding architectural quality". According to a 1976 RAU Survey Report, the building should be declared a national monument.
People's Bank, 73 Commissioner Street
This 11-storey Art Deco building was built originally for the SA Permanent Mutual Bank in 1941 by architects Stucke, Harrison & Smail. It's undergone numerous minor alternations from 1943 through to 1989, when it was upgraded and refurbished. The ground floor banking hall contains a "high coffered ceiling, Art Deco column capitals and glascrete saucer dome", according to Chipkin.
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