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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

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

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

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 ...