Page 72 - Bulletin 12 2008

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The Late 19 Century Town

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Until the mid-19 century all Cape townscapes, with Cape Town itself (by then a flat-
roofed, largely double-storeyed town) the only exception, were configurations of rows

of thatch-roof buildings. Despite the prosaic grid pattern of the streets, the

configurations of long mellow thatched roofs, neatly contained between the white lines
of their ridges and end-gables, made for quality townscapes.

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But as the century progressed, the 19 -century town acquired commercial,
manufacturing, financial elements in addition to its religious, administrative,
educational, judicial, medical and recreational functions. They were awarded municipal

status, and they also tended to acquire a more urban look in their centres. Their street

elevations became more contiguous, and ‘Georgian’ double-storeys would make their
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appearance in between the thatched ‘cottages’ during the later 19 century, corner sites
being particularly favoured for shops and given chamfered corner entrances.

Architecturally, advances in building techniques and materials enabled a much wider
variety of building forms and scale. The ‘benefits of agglomeration’ included much-

improved services like waste removal, water supply, law enforcement and public
transport.

The fully fledged multi-storeyed streetscape lending greater density and enclosedness

and suggesting aspirations towards ‘citihood’ remained rare in the Cape. It is, of course,

found in Cape Town. It is found in the main street of Simon’s Town, dictated by the
narrowness of the coastal strip – and on one side only as in many a harbour town in

Europe. Of the country towns, two-storeyed street elevations of any substance are found
only in Stellenbosch, very possibly prompted by the great fire of 1875 that forced the

abandonment of thatch roofs and prompted the addition of upper storeys, as it had done
in Cape Town a century earlier.