Page 205 - Bulletin 8 2004
P. 205
202
Pediments, Keystones and Mouldings, Groote Schuur Hospital
Groote Schuur Hospital was the successor to the Somerset Hospital in Green Point as Cape
Town’s major hospital. Discussions on such a development had been underway since 1916
but decisions regarding a suitable site (Maitland had been considered), and difficulties in
accumulating the huge sum it would cost, delayed progress. Finally, in 1926, the Cape
Hospital Board concluded a 99-year lease for £1 with UCT for a site that was part of the
Rhodes’ Estates. By 1930 the site had been levelled and the foundations were in place.
The hospital building was designed by the PWD architect Mr. J. S. Clelland, under the
supervision of Colonel Mackintosh of the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, an expert in
hospital construction, who had been brought out by the CHB in 1921 to advise on setting
out the hospital. Clelland was apparently inspired by the architecture and symmetrical plans
of the Union Buildings, Pretoria, and the nearby UCT campus. The hospital building stood
six storeys high with projecting men’s and women’s wings, and from its central entrance a
path led out onto a formal terraced garden that looked out in an easterly direction to the
Hottentots Holland mountains.
The foundation stones were laid on 12 April 1932 by the Governor-General the Earl of
Clarendon, and the Minister of Health Mr. J. H. Conradie. The builders, Messrs.
McDougall & Munro of Durban, were contracted to complete the buildings within three-
and-half years from 3 May 1933 ie. by late 1936, after which the finishes and installations
could be attended to. By the time of the official opening on 31 January 1938 the project had
cost £1 million: £850 000 for the hospital building and nurses’ accommodation behind, and
£150 000 for fittings and equipment. Although it was situated in a small natural valley
above Observatory the whole complex was in its day, and for some time afterwards, the
most prominent building on the Peninsula. (Figs. 4.48 & 4.49).
