Tag: Early Johannesburg
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Rare 1931 Map of Johannesburg tram system
My book dealer tracked down this rare map of the Johannesburg tram system from 1931. I’ve taken a picture of the full map but as it’s quite a big fold-out map, it doesn’t photograph clearly. There are some smaller and clearer sections of the suburbs presented below as well as tram information printed on the…
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History of Braamfontein Pt.3 (Explosion, Cemetery & Early Rand Show)
This is part 3 of what will finally be a 4 part history on Braamfontein. Do go back and check the first two parts here and here as some of the original pictures have been updated with better quality shots. There are also some new additions that weren’t available when the posts were originally published.…
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History of Braamfontein Pt.2 (Lost Braamfontein)
I’ve come across yet another suburb name that a part of Braamfontein was once known as: Argyle (or Argyll). This was once known as Johannesburg’s smallest suburb and was a few blocks west of the old Johannesburg Hospital. According to Anna Smith’s ‘History of Johannesburg street names’, the Transvaal Volksraad granted Commandant Daniel Egnatius Schutte…
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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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Bertrams and Lorentzville
Bertrams On 9 May 1889 Robertson Fuller Bertam (estate agent and stockbroker) leased a portion of land from the Bezhuidenhouts. The township laid out on the leased land was known as Bertram, and later as Bertramstown, appearing as such on an 1896 map. The suburb was meant to cash-in and catch the overflow from New…
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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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Markham’s clock
This is another unusual and out-of-place post, but I can’t resist sharing these pictures of the inside of the Markham’s clock tower and mechanism (or lack thereof). This was at one time the highest building in Johannesburg and it was said that the clock face could be read from as far as Hillbrow. It was…
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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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Early sweeping views
I’ve read that Johannesburg has been rebuilt three times. Initially it was a haphazard town akin to the wild west with lots of tents, tin structures and bars (and some clay huts-these prohibited after 1891 building regulations) With early deeper m…
Johannesburg 1912 - suburb by suburb research 