Thursday, June 19, 2008

City Centre


This is Govan Mbeki Avenue (named after the father of our current State President) which used to be called Main Street. In fact, long before that, it was divided into 3 sections and the bit between the Town Hall and the bottom of Russell Road was called Queen Street. From Russell Road to Albany Road it was called Princes Street, and from Albany Road to the fork where it became the Grahamston Road, it was called Adderley Street. High rise municipal and Government buildings were put up in the 70s and 80s. To the left is the Eric Tindale building which houses the municipal offices, and the one which stands on the bend in the road, so it looks as if it is in the middle is the Main Post Office building. Unfortunately many were built at a time when architecture was not very inspired, to me a lot of them look like giant oxo cubes! To the righ, next to the modern high rise, is one of the original old buildings from the early years of PE's development.

2 comments:

  1. I’ve never thought of it before, but that sort of building does look exactly like a giant oxo cube. I think I might use that myself!

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  2. As far as I know, this is (was) the correct situation: "According to the 1952 Donaldson's Directory, Main Street went from Jetty Street to Russell Road/Griffin Street (Griffin Street was the sea side of Main Street where the Griffin Hotel was, then it was Queen Street until Albany Road/Empire Lane, then Princes Street until Crawford, then Adderley until +- Shell Street/Loch Street at the Sydenham Hotel where the road splits to become Uitenhage Road and Grahamstown Road."

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