Namaqua House, Cape Town

Looking back at this picture of Namaqua House in Cape Town I am amazed at how the colourful the deco building is compared to the later buildings surrounding it.

Even on this relatively dull day in 2003 the cream and coral colours stand out.

Namaqua House was built in 1929 to a design by architects Roberts & Small. The top floor features a cantilevered balcony on each of the two face of the corner-sited building. The Cape Town Art Deco Architecture Map indicates his is an early use of such cantilevered balconies.

The balconies and corresponding sheltering canopies are the most decorated parts of the building.

Dominion Court, Durban

Dominion Court in the Grey St or Indian area of Durban harks back to South Africa being part of the British Empire. A nearby building is called Empire Court.

The building has several Art Deco features. A flagpole with a nice example of a rule of three decoration at the base.

The central panel below the second storey balconies bears a stylised sunburst that could also represent the Union Flag of the United Kingdom. The bays either side are decorated with a tapering horizontal stepped design.

Dominion Court has seen better days but with a bit of work could become a very stylish building once again.

Glen Alpine, Vredehoek

This absolutely fabulous Art Deco block of flats is Glen Alpine in the Cape Suburb of Vredehoek.

Dating from 1939, Glen Alpine was designed by architect Dawood Jacobs.

The location is spectacular, in the foothills of Table Mountain overlooking downtown Cape Town.

McIntosh House, Durban

McIntosh House in Durban was designed by Geoffrey Le Sueur in 1936.

Claradave Mansions, Vredehoek

I love the names that crop up on Art Deco buildings. Claradave Mansions, you can only wonder who Clara and Dave are.

Claradave Mansions are in Vredehoek, nestled below Table Mountain overlooking the downtown area of Cape Town.

The name above the door includes the year 1934 and it would be interesting to know whether the garage built into the nearside of the building dates from that time.

The arrangement of the twin staircases hidden behind stepped walls leading from the main central entrance is very attractive.

Prefcor Building, Durban

This is the Prefcor Building in downtown Durban.

The bulding was originally Payne Bros Department Store. The Facts About Durban website says that when the store opened in 1938 it had the longest escalator in the Southern Hemisphere and local children used to visit the store just to ride on it.

Apartments, Cape Town

I snapped this apartment block from one of our bus tours at the 2003 World Congress on Art Deco in Cape Town.

It is always great to see when original open balconies have been retained and no doubt the South African climate helps in this regard.

The windows are relatively small. Again this is probably a reaction to the local climate, an attempt to keep the flats cool during summer. And I do like the way they are cut through the corners of the block.

A Streamline Building in Cape Town

This streamline art deco building is in downtown Cape Town. I saw it during the 2003 World Congress on Art Deco but it wasn't part of the tour so I don't know what building it is at all.

I know where it is. Diagonally opposite Muller's Optomerists. Maybe someone from Cape Town can identify it for me.

It has this fabulous stepped clock on the corner above the verandah but looks a bit unloved.

Chester House, Durban

Chester House, dating from 1935, was designed by Cowin, Powers and Ellis.

The metal framed windows and horizontal spandrels provide contribute to a very interesting facade. However the rounded columns stretching the full height of the building to the open balcony on the top floor really emphasise the vertical nature of the building.

Berea View, Durban

I've written before about Carlisle Street in Durban. This photo shows this wonderful collection of Art Deco buildings in located in this street.

From left to right they are Berea View, Mount View, Vel-vet Mansions and Carlisle Castle.

Waalburg, Cape Town

The Art Deco Architecture Cape Town Map produced by the Cape Art Deco Society includes this building in Wale Street.

Now called Waalburg, it was originally the Sanlam and Sanlam insurance company and dates from 1932 by architects Louw and Louw.

Relief panels in bronze and Table Mountain stone depict the themes of life in south Africa.

Vredehoek Synagogue, Vredehoek

The Art Deco Architecture Cape Town Map produced by the Cape Art Deco Society includes the former synagogue in Vredehoek.

As you can see, the old synagogue has been deconsecreted, painted red and serves as premises for a variety of commercial ventures.

I wonder what the architect Dr J Ingber would think of his 1938 building with it's current colour scheme.

Mount View, Durban

Mount View is another fabulous Art Deco apartment block in Carlisle Street, Durban.

In this view you can see Mount View in the foreground and Berea View further back.

They look identical to me except for the colouring. Their decoration is very simple. Horizontal lines below the second and third floor windows, a row of circles connected by a line above the top windows and a central flagpole support with more horizontal lines behind that.

The view looking down Carlisle Street in the other direction highlights how good it is for Art Deco. Mount View is again in the foreground but this time we can see Vel-vet Mansions and Carlisle Castle each with different and more elaborate decoration.

Three of the four deco building in this street used to have flagpoles. I can only imagine how good it would look if they were put back.

Balmoral Hotel, Muizenberg

The seaside Cape Town suburb Muizenberg has under gone a renaissance in recently years but even six years ago the Balmoral Hotel looked pretty good.

It's deco heritage is obvious. Twin flagpoles and metal-railed balconies with curved ends. The building itself also has a curved end, probably a flat roof and a series of arches at ground level.

A Gutter in Durban

So. When you have spent eight days straight looking at Art Deco builings and attending presentations on Art Deco, do you start to see Art Deco everywhere?

A House Near Cape Town

On our visit to Cape Town we hired mini-van and a driver for a trip down the cape, spotting deco and wildlife as we went.

This house was just off the road on the side of a hill and I'm sure we all yelled 'Stop' simultaneously when we caught a glimpse of the colours and that amazing circular room at the front.

I like the red and blue stripes above the large curved window and the port hole near the door, but my favourite part is the eyebrow on the rectangular window on the left of the door which starts above the window and sweeps around to ground level.

Carlisle Castle, Durban

OK, I'll admit my inspiration for going to Durban tonight is the Cricket. Ponting and Hughes look very comfortable at Kingsmead and the Test at the moment is going Australia's way.

In fact I've just flicked over to The Saint. It's an old B+W episode from 1964 called Luella. I'm a sucker for the old British ITC shows so I'll stick with Simon for a while. But I digress.

This beautiful apartment block is in the Grey Street precict of Durban, next door toVel-Vet Mansions. It is called Carlisle Castle and while the basic shape of the building is very similar to Vel-Vet, the colouring and decoration is completely different.

The building is a yellow-cream colour with rouge-red decoration. Between the second and third floor the is a large geometric panel bearing the name of the building.

An larger, more elaborate panel incorporating diaomonds and other geometric shapes, sits above the third floor windows just below the roofline. Centred in this decorative element is the remants of the supports for a flagpole, now sadly missing.

Above the windows the decoration consists of simple row of squares.

Back at ground level the use of red and black bricks, arranged in diagonal stripes flank the communal doorway.

Flats, Vredehoek

Usually I go out of my way to avoid getting people in the way of the buildings I am photographing. Sometimes there is no way around it.

This a tour group the Cape Town suburb of Vredhoek during the 7th World Congress on Art Deco grabbing what little shade there was out of the South African sun.

This picture also goes a long to explaining why I am a bit hazy about some of the buildings I have photographed. The tour guide is in the right of this photo and as you can see I am on the other site of the road photographing the wrong building and can't hear a word of what he is saying.

Anyone in Cape Town or elsewhere who knows what this building is called, it would be greatly appreciated.

Montreux Flats, Cape Town

This morning I tagged along for the encore Port Melbourne Art Deco walk repeated because the original walk two weeks ago had been so popular. It was part of the City of Port Phillip Walks Program and you may feel it is a long way from Cape Town. Frankly you'd be correct.

However, one of the walkers was originally from South Africa and remembered a particular block of flats in Queen Victoria Street in Cape Town with wonderful rounded balconies. I had been to the 7th World Congress on Art Deco in Cape Town in 2003 but I couldn't recall the flats she was referring to until Robin Grow, President of the Art Deco and Modernism Society and leader of the walk remembered a block of flats near the Gardens in downtown Cape Town.

The Company Gardens in Cape Town have an interesting history as I have found out from an article by Stewart Harris in the 7th Edition of the Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa (VASSA) entitled How the garden grew: A brief spatial history of the Cape Town Gardens.

The gardens were founded in the 1650s by the Dutch East India Company and changed shape and purpose through successive Governments and the encroaching city to become the gardens of today.

The passage in Stewart's article which drew my attention concerned the development of Queen Victoria Street, bordering the gardens, which in the late 1920s and 1930s acquired more grand buildings including a block of flats called Montreux in 1936.

Now back to 2003 the Congress included a visit to Montreux to view a flat that had been furnished with locally produced pieces.

The furniture was fantastic but so was the metalwork on the stairways and internal balconies overlooking the central courtyard.

Not to mention the internal wooden doors with small diamond shaped windows and stepped vertical patterns both on the door panel and the surrounds.

I have no idea how I could have forgotten this wonderful block of flats.

Mutual Building, Cape Town

The Mutual Building, the former headquarters of the Old Mutual company in Cape Town, is a huge skyscraper in downtown Cape Town. Dating from 1939, it was designed by F M Glennie and Louw & Louw.

The building features many decorative features including elephants and baboons heads on the upper levels and an amazing frieze around the whole building just above street level showing the history of the colonisation of South Africa. The interior is also richly decorated.

Today though, I want to concentrate on the series of nine reliefs on the side of the building depicting the black tribal groups of southern Africa.

The carvings are exquisite and have been executed in great detail.

Each one is named although several are somewhat out of date.

If you want to know more about the peoples of southern Africa, particularily the black tribal groups, the South African Tourism website has an excellent write-up.

The tribal groups shown from left to right are :-

Xosa

Pedi

Masai

Matabele

Basuto

Barotse

Kikuyu

Zulu

Bushman