Tag: Commissioner Street
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History of Ferreira’s Dorp (or Ferreira’s Town)
Ferreira’s Dorp or Ferreira’s Town (or both one-word variations) is an area in the south-western part of the originally laid out township of Johannesburg. It borders Marshalltown, Newtown, and Westgate. It predates the birth of Johannesburg by several months and holds the early history of Africans, Chinese, Jewish, and Indian communities in the mining town…
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Johannesburg from the air 1931
While I finish up the first part of the history of Braamfontein, here is some vintage aerial footage of Johannesburg showing some edges of Braamfontein. Old aerial views of Johannesburg are hard to come by and sometimes tricky to pinpoint the location. The reason is that the city has been re-built so many times –…
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Troyeville
There are very few pictures of early Troyeville but the above postcard is a great landscape shot where one can see the great general changes over a period of just over 100 years. The postcard picture was taken from the Fairview Fire Tower around 1910. The picture below was taken from the fire training tower…
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Fairview (once known as ‘Fawcus Township’ sometimes spelt ‘Faucus’)
It was also once called Georgetown and Johannesburg Extension, but I didn’t want to push my luck adding this to the title. This ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ suburb is wedged between Jeppestown on the south and Troyeville on the north and if traveling east along Commissioner Street is what you pass through before entering…
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Jeppestown & Belgravia Pt.5 (Osborn Pharmacy, Thrupps, Cosmopolitan Hotel, Jeppestown Synagogue and Jooste & Bryant’s building)
Osborn Pharmacy The plans for this building date back to 24 August 1898 and it was evidently built before the Anglo-Boer War by J.R. Koller. A good description is ‘…more leisurely pace with its Victorian air, which is suburban rather than city centred.’ Although mostly Victorian with a highly decorated roofline, there are also elements…
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Theatres and Bioscopes in early Johannesburg
The first theatre in JHB called Theatre Royal was in Market Street (east) and erected on 17 June 1887 (some sources say 15th June) by J. Mipping. The portable and demountable structure came from Newcastle. The two stands on which the theatre was erected were purchased by Mipping via a sale on 8 December 1886.…
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Short history of trams in Johannesburg
Since moving this blog from Posterous (RIP), the traffic has more than doubled and for the first time I’m also able to see what people searched for to get to my blog. A few weeks ago there was a spike in ‘tram’ searches so I decided to slot a quick history of trams in-between the…
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Introduction and Randjeslaagte
A year ago, while planning for a new room/story to be built on our house in Melville, I got to see the original hand drawn plans from 1912. The house looked very different back then. How cool would it be if I could find a picture of what the house…
Johannesburg 1912 - suburb by suburb research 