Page 94 - Bulletin 12 2008

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of buildings as largely flat-roofed and double-storeyed. Even some priceless
photographs taken as late as the 1870s still show the winding main street, renamed St.

George’s Street, lined with Dutch and Georgian double-storeys. This was soon to
change and all buildings were Victorianised, sometimes refronted, except for one:

Bayview, the triple-storeyed house with high stoep and shops below that still today

retains its ‘Dutch’ appearance.

The built-up part of the main street was since extended as far as the railway station, well
north of Admiralty House, to beyond Cole Point in the south. This stretch is rightly

known as the ‘historical mile’. Schonegevel also shows early harbour development:
several piers and jetties had made their appearance by the 1850s. But for all its changes,

St. George’s Street, today lined with Victorian and Edwardian commercial buildings

and hotels, many containing much older fabric, others new structures by name architects
like Herbert Baker and John Parker, still presents a unique streetscape. Its continuous

but winding street façade is always in evidence, with the mountain rising behind, the

alleyways up the slope, the truly intimate little Market (now Jubilee) Square, the more
substantial naval buildings in the walled dockyards below, some naval vessels in the

now vastly expanded harbour basin, and False Bay and the distant Hottentots-Holland
mountains beyond. It is an example of how a geographical setting of note and an

architecture of consistency in scale that takes note of that setting can produce a
townscape of quality. As such it is unique in the Cape.

Kalk Bay (Figs. 3.17 – 3.21)

Kalk Bay, one in a string of localities along the False Bay coast of the Cape Peninsula,
th
until well into the second half of the 19 century could hardly be termed a town or even
a village. Yet it is a place of great character, and is the Cape’s most attractive fishing-
harbour town. As such it complements nearby Simon’s Town, the naval base, with

which it has much in common, notably the most urban quality of the uninterrupted rows

of buildings along the mountain-side of their main streets looking out over their harbour
precincts.