1-16 of 16 Results  for:

  • Architecture and Urban Planning x
  • Nineteenth-Century Art x
  • African Art x
  • Artist, Architect, or Designer x
Clear all

Article

Gavin Stamp

(b Cobham, Kent, June 9, 1862; d Cobham, Feb 4, 1946).

English architect and writer, also active in South Africa and India. He was articled to a cousin, Arthur Baker, a former assistant of George Gilbert Scott I, in 1879 and attended classes at the Architectural Association and Royal Academy Schools before joining the office of George & Peto in London (1882), where he first met and befriended Edwin Lutyens. Baker set up in independent practice in 1890 but moved to South Africa in 1892 to join his brother Lionel Baker. In Cape Town he met Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, who directed his attention to the traditional European Cape Dutch architecture of the province and asked him to rebuild his house Groote Schuur (1893, 1897), now the official residence of South Africa’s prime ministers. Applying the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement to local conditions, Baker produced a series of houses, both in the Cape Province and the Transvaal, which were instrumental in the revival of Cape Dutch architecture. In ...

Article

Barry Bergdoll

(b Marseille, Nov 26, 1787; d Marseille, Feb 8, 1879).

French architect and writer. The designer of many of the principal public buildings of Marseille, he also published the first accurate records of the Islamic monuments of Cairo, North Africa and the Middle East—a central interest of mid-19th-century architectural theorists and ornamentalists.

After studying both engineering and drawing in Marseille, Coste began his career in 1804 as site inspector and draughtsman for the Neo-classicist Michel-Robert Penchaud, a municipal and departmental architect, for whom he worked for a decade. In 1814, on the recommendation of the architects Percier & Fontaine, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the ateliers of Antoine-Laurent-Thomas Vaudoyer and Jean-Baptiste Labadye (1777–1850). An encounter in Paris with the geographer Jombert, who had been a member of the scientific mission that accompanied Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, was to influence his subsequent career. In 1817 Jombert recommended Coste to Muhammad ‛Ali, Khedive of Egypt (...

Article

Marilyn Martin

(b Dublin, 1852; d Bath, Jan 13, 1891).

Irish architect, active in South Africa. He was articled to the firm of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon of Dublin and Belfast at the age of 15, serving an apprenticeship for 5 years. The firm was dissolved in 1872 and Dudgeon joined William Henry Lynn as manager and chief assistant. He left towards the end of 1875, travelled for 12 months and arrived in Durban in January 1877. Only 6 of the 44 buildings designed or altered by him are extant. They encompass a variety of building types and styles. The major source of inspiration for the Standard Bank (1878–83) in Pietermaritzburg was Charles Lanyon’s Head Office of the Northern Bank (1851–2) in Belfast. The potential of the salmon-pink Pietermaritzburg brick is fully exploited in a stripped classical building with a central portico in antis.

Dudgeon won the competition for Durban Town Hall (1882–5). The building comprises a hexastyle Corinthian portico with flanking wings and a tower rising behind it. Although it was based on British prototypes, Dudgeon made concessions to the climate in the large size and convenience of areas, in the attention paid to ventilation and in the loggia protecting the north façade from the sun. For Maritzburg College (...

Article

Barry Bergdoll

(b Cologne, June 15, 1790; d Paris, Dec 31, 1853).

French architect, writer and archaeologist of German birth. In 1810 he left Cologne with his lifelong friend J. I. Hittorff for Paris, enrolling at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1811 under the tutelage of the ardent Neo-classicists Louis-Hippolyte Lebas and François Debret. But from the beginning Gau was exposed to a wider field of historical sources, first as assistant site architect under Debret on the restoration of the abbey church of Saint-Denis (1813–15) and then from 1815 in Nazarene circles in Rome, where he met the archaeologist and philologist Barthold Nieburh (1776–1831), who arranged a scholarship for him from the Prussian government and a trip through the eastern Mediterranean. In Egypt Gau undertook an arduous trip down the Nile to visit and record the monuments of Nubia, which he published as the lavish folio Antiquités de la Nubie. He noted assiduously every trace of colour on the remains, just as he was to do in ...

Article

Elizabeth Meredith Dowling

(b Johannesburg, Sept 7, 1938).

American architect, teacher, historian, and writer of South African birth. Greenberg’s quiet, gentlemanly demeanor reflected the time-honored traditional and classical architecture he created over four decades. His stylistic choices are rooted in research and aesthetics. His fascination with 18th- and 19th-century American architecture is related to its genesis in the American Revolution and the commitment of those architects to expressing American democratic ideals in architectural form.

Greenberg graduated from King Edward VII School, a private preparatory school in Johannesburg, in 1955. He received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1961. Unlike American architecture schools of the period, his training was classically based and included drawing the historic models of Classical and Gothic architecture from memory. During his apprenticeship, he worked with Jørn Utzon in Hellebæk, Denmark, in 1962 during the design phase of the Sydney Opera House. In 1963, he continued his apprenticeship working with both ...

Article

Dennis Radford

(b Dresden, Oct 16, 1813; d Stellenbosch, Oct 8, 1898).

German architect, builder, painter and photographer, active in South Africa. He showed a talent for drawing at an early age. In 1825 he entered the Akademie der Künste, Dresden, to study architecture, qualifying in 1829. He emigrated to Cape Town in 1838. His first commission in 1840 was the new Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Mary, Cape Town, undertaken with his partner Carel Sparmann, which was an unsuccessful venture. Hager then moved to Stellenbosch living principally by portrait painting (examples in Stellenbosch Mus.). It was not until 1854 that his next building, the Lutheran Church, Dorp Street, Stellenbosch, was built. Only in 1863, however, did he receive his first major commission, the remodelling of the Dutch Reformed Church, Stellenbosch. This involved the addition of a large nave, aisles and tower to the existing cruciform church. All the additions were strongly Gothic Revival in character, and the rest of the church was given a Gothic appearance. It would be an exaggeration to claim that it was Hager who introduced the Gothic style into Dutch Reformed churches, but it can be said that he introduced a purer strain of the Revival, although this was still far from ‘correct’. The church at Stellenbosch differs most from previous attempts to Gothicize Dutch Reformed churches in the tower, which has triple-stage base tracery windows surmounted by a broach spire. The open Gothic trussed roof marks its first appearance in Dutch Reformed churches. In ...

Article

Andrew Scott Dolkart

(b Hempstead, NY, Aug 27, 1809; d Hempstead, July 24, 1871).

American architect. Kellum initially trained as a carpenter, and his architectural career began in the early 1840s when he entered the office of the Brooklyn architect Gamaliel King (1795–1875). Kellum opened his own office in 1859. He worked within the established stylistic currents of the period, designing primarily in the Italianate and Second Empire styles. He received several notable commercial commissions, including the first permanent building for the New York Stock Exchange (1863–5; altered 1880–81; destr. 1901), Wall Street, New York, and one major civic monument, the New York County Courthouse (1861–81; completed by Leopold Eidlitz; restored and converted into headquarters of the New York City Board of Education, 2002), City Hall Park, New York, commonly known as the ‘Tweed Courthouse’. Kellum was among the first architects to design buildings with cast-iron fronts. His Cary Building (1856–7; with Gamaliel King), Chambers and Reade streets, New York, with its iron façades cast in imitation of ...

Article

C. J. M. Walker

(b Melbourne, Jan 2, 1870; d Cape Town, Nov 20, 1948).

South African architect. His parents were English, and he was educated in London and worked for a builder, S. J. Jerrard, from 1885 to 1887; he then studied architecture at the University of London (1887–90). In 1889 he was articled to Roger Smith & Gale, London, and he subsequently worked for them, for William Emerson and for Ernest George & Yates before leaving for South Africa early in 1896. He settled in the Cape, working for J. Parker, Sydney Stent and then for Herbert Baker in Cape Town, all in 1896. He became a junior partner in the firm of Baker & Masey (c. 1899), and from 1902 to 1905 he ran the office in Bloemfontein while he supervised work on the new government offices for the Orange River Colony. In 1906 he became a senior partner and, on Francis Masey’s departure in 1910, a principal in the new partnership of ...

Article

C. J. M. Walker

(Edward)

(b London, Nov 18, 1861; d Salisbury, Rhodesia [now Harare, Zimbabwe], Sept 3, 1912).

English architect active in South Africa and Rhodesia. He was apprenticed to his father, the architect Philip Masey, in London for two years before entering the office of Alfred Waterhouse (1878). In 1887 he became a student in the Royal Academy Schools, London, and he won several prizes that enabled him to visit France (1889) and Italy (1891). In 1896 he went to Cape Town on a three-year contract with the Public Works Department, but soon after his arrival he met Herbert Baker, broke his contract and entered practice with him; the partnership of Baker & Masey was formed in 1899. Their first success was winning the competition for the City Club (1896–7), Cape Town, built to a classical design with Baroque gables and domes. Masey’s studies in Italy were a major influence on the use of the Italianate style frequently adopted by the practice, particularly before Baker’s visit to see Classical sites in Europe in ...

Article

C. J. M. Walker

(b Plymouth, July 1856; d Cape Town, Oct 1922).

South African architect of English birth. He trained in England, moving to South Africa in 1877. After working in the Cape for several years he moved to Johannesburg (1887), reputedly the first trained architect to practice in the town. In partnership with R. L. McCowat (c. 1885–1925) he designed the second Rand Club (1893; destr. 1903) and the first Johannesburg General Hospital (1889). Both buildings were semi-classical, High Victorian structures with pediments over every aperture. They were characteristic of the nature of many early buildings in Johannesburg and elsewhere in South Africa, becoming a vernacular easily resorted to by architects of no particular distinction but providing the backdrop against which the work of more talented architects was evident. Reid was among the first architects in South Africa to develop branch practices. In 1897 Reid returned to Cape Town, leaving his brother Walter Reid (...

Article

Melanie Hillebrand

(b London, June 5, 1856; d Durban, June 23, 1928).

South African architect of English birth. He studied at the University of London and was articled to W. W. Gwyther in London, then to J. McVicar Anderson and to Robert Hesketh. In 1881 he established his own practice in London. He moved to the colony of Natal c. 1886 and set up practice in Durban and Pietermaritzburg in partnership first with Percy Barr (d 1894), then with Arthur Fyfe until c. 1899, and finally with J. Wallace Paton (1874–1948) from c. 1899 until his death. Street-Wilson was a prolific architect and designed many houses, shops and office buildings, but his reputation was based on public commissions. The Pietermaritzburg Town Hall (1893; destr. 1898) was his first major work: a modest, two-storey ‘Free Renaissance design’ using the characteristic salmon-pink brick of the area. Invited to design a new structure after its destruction by fire, he created a florid three-storey version using imported plaster mouldings and cast iron. Other successful designs in this style include Scott’s Theatre (...

Article

G.-M. van der Waal

(b Cheltenham, Glos, March 6, 1865; d Johannesburg, April 11, 1931).

South African architect of English birth. He trained as an ecclesiastical architect in Cheltenham and after a few years’ employment in London went to South Africa (1889) where he opened an office in Bloemfontein. He moved in 1894 to the booming mining town of Johannesburg where he did most of his work. In 1888 he passed the RIBA examination, and was accepted as a Fellow in 1910. Stucke was the senior member in various partnerships (particularly with John Edwin Harrison, 1870–1945) from 1897, with offices in nearly all the major cities of the country. In the organized profession (the Association of Transvaal Architects) he played an active part and was chosen as adjudicator of the Herbert Baker Scholarship in 1911 and 1913.

Stucke won several competitions, but his work is characterized by the large number of commissions he received from the Standard Bank and SA Mutual in various cities and towns, as well as from several department stores. Other work included churches, schools, blocks of flats and residences. Throughout his career he was noted for the innovative way in which he interpreted current architectural conventions and his sensitivity for the existing urban fabric. During the 1890s he conformed to the eclectic movement of the day, employing a consistent personal design structure and interpreting revival styles creatively, as seen in works such as the SA Mutual Building (...

Article

Hélène Bocard

(b Saint-Flour, Cantal, Jan 14, 1817; d Saint-Martin-le-Vinoux, nr Grenoble, Aug 28, 1892).

French photographer and civil engineer. He was fascinated by Egyptology from an early age and visited Egypt from 1851 to 1852. He returned there in 1869 with an official invitation to the opening of the Suez Canal. He brought a number of calotypes back to France after his first trip, and these made up his album Egypte et Nubie. Sites et monuments les plus intéressants pour l’étude de l’art et de l’histoire. Atlas photographique accompagné de plans et d’une table explicative servant de complément à la grande ‘description de l’Egypte’. This sumptuous work, illustrated by 160 large-format plates printed by H. de Fonteny, was published from 1853 to 1858 by Goupil. The views shown were varied and included ancient monuments such as the Temple of Abu Simbel, the Pyramid of Chephren and the Ruins of Aswan as well as modern ones such as the Town of Asyut, the banks of the Nile and local people going about their daily business, as in ...

Article

Roger C. Fisher

(b Picquigny, nr Amiens, bapt Paris, Feb 29, 1750; d Cape Town, Nov 3, 1815).

French architect, teacher, engineer and surveyor, active in South Africa. He studied (1774–5) at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, Paris, under Ange-Jacques Gabriel, Richard Mique and Julien-David Le Roy. He then trained as an engineer officer, and in 1781, with the patronage of Colonel C. D. de Meuron, he studied military engineering. He was landed at the Cape of Good Hope in 1783, as a mercenary employed by the Dutch East India Company. Here he was privately commissioned to execute such projects as Papenboom (1786; destr.; see Lewcock, pls 43, 43A), a country house in Newlands, and Saasveldt (1791), a Cape Town residence demolished and rebuilt in 1966 as the Huguenot Memorial Museum at Franschhoek. From this period date the series of Cape Dutch houses conventionally attributed to Thibault and for which he is best known. These include the Groot Constantia reconstruction (1791–3), the Tokai Manor House (...

Article

G.-M. van der Waal

(b Wynjeterp, Friesland, Feb 28, 1839; d Sea Point, Cape Province, Dec 10, 1911).

South African architect and engineer of Dutch birth. He trained as a carpenter but became an architect and chief inspector to the Netherlands Railways, the service of which he entered in 1866. He gained wide architectural experience and supervised the construction of the Centraal Station, Amsterdam. In November 1887 he became a member of the Dutch Royal Institute of Engineers and was appointed Government Architect and Engineer of the Transvaal Republic in South Africa. The name of the post was changed in 1895 to Chief of Public Works. Under Wierda’s guidance the department built up a considerable band of architects and draughtsmen who were responsible for many public buildings, mostly in developing urban areas and bearing the characteristic stamp of the Republican style. Wierda became a member of the South African Association of Engineers and Architects in 1894. He left Pretoria in 1901/2 when the British forces took over the Public Works Department during the Boer War (...

Article

South African, 19th–20th century, male.

Born 26 December 1862, in Driebergen, Holland; died 30 July 1945, in Pretoria.

Sculptor (bronze, marble, and wood), painter.

Anton van Wouw established the Western realist sculptural tradition in South Africa. He received initial training from Joseph Graven and worked for a firm of decorative plasterers in Rotterdam. In the evenings he studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Art. He settled in Pretoria on ...