Explore Gauteng
Safe, prosperous and packed with shops and restaurants, the northern suburbs seem a world apart from the CBD and its surrounds. The name is actually a catch-all term for the seemingly endless urban sprawl running over 30km from Parktown, beyond the N1 ring road and into an area known as Midrand, which is itself creeping toward the southern edge of Pretoria. With the notable exception of Alexandra, this is a moneyed area, where plush shopping malls are often the only communal meeting points, and the majority of homes use high walls, iron gates and electric fences to advertise how security-conscious a life the owners lead. Despite the often numbing sheen of affluence, however, interesting pockets do exist, such as the centres of the suburbs of Melville, Rosebank and Parkhurst. Most of the suburbs are close to major arterial roads and best explored by car, though the new Gautrain and its bus routes now also offer easy access to some areas.
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Parktown
Parktown
The first elite residential area in Johannesburg, Parktown has retained its upmarket status despite its proximity to Hillbrow, which lies just southeast on the other side of Empire Road. The first people to settle in Parktown were Sir Lionel Philips, president of the Chamber of Mines, and his wife Lady Florence. In 1892, seeking a residence that looked onto the Magaliesberg rather than the mine dumps, they had a house built on what was then the Braamfontein farm. The rest of the farm was planted with eucalyptus trees and became known as the Sachsenwald Forest, some of which was given over to the Johannesburg Zoo a few years later. The remaining land was cleared in 1925 to make way for more residential developments.
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Melville
Melville
Together with Parkhurst, Melville is one of the more relaxed of the northern suburbs. When so many shops and restaurants in Jo’burg are tucked away in soulless malls, it’s refreshing to find streets that are pleasant to walk and full of cafés, second-hand bookshops and quirky antique dealers as well as a main drag (Seventh Street) lined with restaurants, bars and clubs for every taste. Melville lost some of its appeal in recent years as restaurants were increasingly replaced by noisy student bars, but new security patrols have been effective in reducing problems.
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Sir Herbert Baker
Sir Herbert Baker
South Africa’s most famous architect, Sir Herbert Baker, was born in Kent, England, in 1862. Apprenticed to his architect uncle in London at the age of 17, Baker attended classes at the Royal Academy and Architectural Association, where he took care to make the contacts he would use so skilfully in later life. By the time he left for the Cape in 1892, Baker was already a convert to the new so-called Free Style, which advocated an often bizarre, but roughly historical, eclecticism. The young architect’s favourite influences, which would crop up again and again in his work, were Renaissance Italian and medieval Kentish.
Once in the Cape, Baker met Cecil Rhodes, and this connection, assiduously cultivated, established him as a major architectural player. The second Anglo-Boer War began in 1899 and Rhodes, assuming eventual British victory, sent Baker off to study the Classical architecture of Italy and Greece, hoping that he would return fully equipped to create a British imperial architecture in South Africa. Baker returned to South Africa deeply influenced by what he had seen, and was summoned by Lord Alfred Milner, the administrator of the defeated Transvaal, to fulfil Rhodes’ hopes.
Baker took up the challenge enthusiastically, beginning with the homes of the so-called “kindergarten”, the young men, mostly Oxford- and Cambridge-educated, whom Milner had imported to bring British-style “good governance” to the defeated territory. The result was the Parktown mansions, the opulent houses lining the roads of Johannesburg’s wealthiest suburb. In adherence to the architectural creeds he had learnt in England, Baker trained local craftsmen and used local materials for these mansions. He also pioneered the use of local koppie stone, lending a dramatic aspect even to unadventurous designs.
Baker’s major public commissions were the St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg, and the sober, assertive Union Buildings in Pretoria, which more than any other building express the British imperial dream – obsessed with Classical precedent, and in a location chosen because of its similarity to the site of the Acropolis in Athens.
Baker left South Africa in 1913 to design the Secretariat in New Delhi, India, returning to England on its completion, where he worked on South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, London. He was knighted in 1923; he died in 1946, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Parktown’s Randlord mansions
Parktown’s Randlord mansions
Parktown’s main attraction lies in its distinctive architecture, largely the legacy of Sir Herbert Baker. Baker’s arrival in 1902 heralded a style particular to this district, still evident today in the opulent mansions of the Randlords, the rich mine owners, lining the streets. The Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust runs regular tours, usually on Saturday afternoons, to some of the notable buildings in Parktown as well as to other districts in Johannesburg; and the Heritage Weekend (second weekend in September), also organized by the Trust, features more tours and special events around the Parktown mansions and city centre.
High walls make viewing the buildings a little tricky on an independent visit, though most now have blue plaques with information outside. A good place to start is the area around Ridge Road, just north of the Randjeslaagte beacon, which marks the northern point of old Johannesburg. The Sunnyside Park Hotel here is a massive complex that Lord Alfred Milner used as his governor’s residence from 1900. The best of the houses nearby are Hazeldene Hall, built in 1902 and featuring cast-iron verandas imported from Glasgow, and The View, built in 1897, with carved wooden verandas and an elegant red-brick exterior. To the north of Ridge Road, York Road curves to the left into Jubilee Road, with several palaces on its northern side; the neo-Queen Anne-style Emoyeni, at no. 15, built in 1905, is especially striking. At the corner of Jubilee Road and Victoria Avenue stands Dolobran, a weird and impressive house, also built in 1905, with a perfect veranda, wonderful red-brick chimneys, red Marseilles roof tiles and hallucinatory stained glass.
Crossing the busy M1 onto Rock Ridge Road, you’ll reach the Northwards Mansion, built by Sir Herbert Baker in 1904 and home of the Parktown Trust. Unfortunately, there’s no access along the road to Baker’s own residence at no. 5. On the parallel Sherborne Road, you can see Baker’s attractive St George’s Church and its rectory, which mix Kentish and Italian features and were built in local rock.
