Download Bulwer Road - Durban Art Deco Society

DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
P O Box 3066, 4000 DURBAN
email: [email protected]
© Durban Art Deco Society – 2013
DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(DADS)
The Durban Art Deco Society (founded in 1999) is a small group of enthusiastic people who try to encourage
owners of Art Deco style buildings to be aware of their Art Deco heritage, offer advice on
restoration/repainting, and organise lectures/tours, etc. The society also has a room at Surrey Mansions
where archival information and their collection of books about Art Deco are kept – this is open to members
and interested persons at specific times.
Durban has a number of very fine examples of this important style, mostly residential blocks built between
1930 and 1940, and include among others: Broadwindsor and Manhattan Court in Dr Yusuf Dadoo Street
(Broad Street); Enterprise Building in Samora Machel (Aliwal) Street; Victoria Mansions and Willern Court on
Margaret Mncadi Avenue (Victoria Embankment); Berea Court on Berea Road, Cheviot Court in Musgrave
Road and Surrey Mansions in Currie Road.
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Art Deco, according to the Penguin dictionary of Architecture, is the name given to the fashionable Jazz Age
style concurrent with International Modern in the 1920s and 1930s. The name derives from the Paris
Exhibition of decorative and industrial art held in 1925. It soon spread to the United States and figured
prominently in the skyscraper building boom of the thirties as well as in lesser commercial buildings in New
York, Miami and Los Angeles. Europe was influential in developing the style which is notable for the fact that
it embraced a wide range of creative endeavours like graphic design, ceramics, fabrics, household artifacts.
Characteristics are ‘streamlining’, stylised organic and animal motifs, repetitive geometric patterns,
sunbursts, sensuous colours and the introduction of local decorative themes. It is a widely travelled, highly
eclectic style that makes precise definition difficult.
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The Art Deco movement that spread throughout the world between 1925 and 1940 embraced all the
plastic and graphic arts: architecture, furniture, household artifacts, ceramics, textiles, jewellery,
radios, cars, glass, fabrics, paintings and photography, chryselephantine statuettes, graphic
design etc.
Architecture is the single area in which the US led Europe in the 1920s Modernist decoration. In France,
curiously, the Parisian Art Deco style, which dominated the annual decorative arts salons from the end of
WWI until the 1925 International Exposition, was applied only infrequently to buildings.
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A characteristic of Durban’s Art Deco buildings is the pilasters which are round or square pillars attached to
the building. They go the whole height of the building getting more and more enriched with elements of
fauna, flora, fish and birds, some mythical creatures, and sometimes finishing with crenulations.
The purpose of this device is to carry your eyes up the building and it works very well. Many of them have
well designed courtyards or back of building stairwells. We have two buildings with a zig zag design on the
building, the earliest style.
e&oe
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DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
(Source: Dennis Claude)
PREFCOR HOUSE, formerly PAYNE BROS now GAME, 398 Dr Pixley KaSeme (West) Street.
Heavily modulated, multiple squared vertical elements.
COLONIAL MUTUAL BUILDING, 330 Dr Pixley KaSeme (West) Street.
NOT REALLY ART DECO BUT AN INTERESTING BUILDING
Elsworth, Hennesey & Hennesey, Sydney. 1931-33.
Designed in an international competition won by Elsworth, Hennessey & Hennessey of Sydney, Australia, in
1931-33, this is a fourteen storey skyscraper office building which was the city’s tallest until 1939.
Richly ornamented with a range of features, some of them like the “barley sugar” columns and heraldic
shields not strictly Art Deco.
Delightful animal and frieze motifs.
Despite, or maybe because of, a number of Romanesque and Rococo features, the building fits within the
early Manhattan inspired Art Deco theme. The jazz chevron is used intermittently over the whole façade and
local influence is seen in stylised lions, streamlined eagles and realistic antelope worked in stucco. The
original banking hall was done out in yellow and brown travertine but this was destroyed in 1973.
When converting to student accommodation a couple of years ago, many of the remaining art deco elements
in/on the building were either destroyed or stolen.
HOLLYWOOD COURT, 197 Anton Lembede (Smith) Street.
Hobbs & Bonieux, 1937.
Fourteen storey “skyscraper” in reinforced concrete and plastered brick.
Might also be termed “Style Moderne” as the principal design qualities
reside in the strong geometric forms which multiply across the face of
the building and which look particularly good in sunlight.
It has an interesting Entrance Hall feature: The Folly.
Notable for the well designed rear elevation, especially the escape
stairs. The forms read well in sunlight.
ALBANY HOTEL, 225 Anton Lembede (Smith) Street
Multi storey hotel in a prime city location. It has giant order pilasters and a three storey podium with good
horizontal strip windows, zigzag folded spandrels (area beneath the windows) and streamline finial elements.
ENTERPRISE BUILDING. 47 Samora Machel (Aliwal) Street.
Designed by A A Ritchie McKinley, 1931, it is a classic Art Deco building, now in revival of sorts. Eight-storey
apartment building with distinctive elevational treatment in the form of a rich range of stylised geometric
animal and abstract figures. Griffons and zig-zag forms at high level with Mayan type heads and a superb
eagle form over the entrance. The “fasces” motives (bundle of rods, often tied, with an axe, carried by lictors
before the superior magistrates as an emblem of power) might indicate sympathy with the advent of
Mussolini on the part of the architect or client.
The verandas have been enclosed and ugly changes made to ground floor.
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DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
VICTORIA MANSIONS. 124 Margaret Mncadi Avenue (Victoria Embankment).
Nelson Secombe, 1935. Vertical pilasters rising through arcuated first floor. Rich in geometric, animal and
marine fantastical decorative features.
Apart from dolphins it also has a vulture feature on the side panel of the entrance.
Glazed tile panel above the entrance commemorates the Union Castle mail ships that called at Durban for so
many years.
WILLERN COURT. 159 Margaret Mncadi Avenue (Victoria
Embankment).
William Barboure, 1937.
The building has strong vertical and horizontal lines in balanced
tension with rectangular and curved forms. Original curved glass
corner windows have been replaced. There is a fine entrance
canopy with stone facing panels and coloured glass leaded panels
on either side of the entrance.
Originally each flat had two large interesting coloured glass and
lead glass windows on either side of the inside ‘porch’. However,
many were discarded or sold, so only a few remain.
Fairly intact, authentic foyer details, well maintained. Strong
contrasts in vertical and horizontal elements; rectangular and
curvilinear forms.
BROADWINDSOR.
7 Dr Yusuf Dado Road (Broad Street) and Margaret Mncadi Avenue
(Victoria Embankment).
W C Moffatt & Hirst, 1935.
Now in need of a major maintenance programme and restoration of the
ground floor. There is an entrance canopy with curved corners which
relate to the superstructure and windows above. The eye is guided up by
strong vertical pilasters to the famous flying birds which make a dramatic
finale to the composition. The rear elevation has well designed chunky
forms which read well in the afternoon light.
Contrast between horizontal and vertical expression leading to the climax
of the flying birds. Steel windows, originally with curved glass corners,
fixed flush with the stucco façade. Strong geometric resolution of rear
elevation and escape stairs. Has unfortunately become very dilapidated.
(stucco – a fine plaster, esp. made from gypsum and pulverized marble, for covering walls, ceilings, etc., and making cornices
and other architectural decorations / a coarse plaster or calcareous cement esp. for covering a rough exterior surface to give the
appearance of stone / the process of ornamenting walls, ceilings, etc. with stucco; work or ornamentation produced by this
process. Used because it covered the brick very well and could be used effectively for moulding.)
MANHATTAN COURT. 11 Broad Street. A G Frolich, 1937
Horizontal emphasis maintained by aluminium windows which replaced the previous galvanised iron ones.
Authentic and original Entrance Hall with fine light fittings and benches.
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DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
NORDIC COURT, 55 Dr Yusuf Dado Road (Broad Street).
c1933.
Addition by A G Frolich, 1938. Additional floor added by Frolich & Kass, 1947.
Good, imaginative decorative panels. Similar to a building in Miami.
Recently repaired and painted in somewhat bright terracotta and turquoise colours.
BROADWAY COURT. 57 Dr Yusuf Dado Road (Broad Street) colours.
A G Frolich, November 1933. For P E P Rorvick.
Horizontal motif to street elevation. Verging on “Style Moderne”
These two buildings stand side by side and have been re-painted in the same colours
BEREA COURT, 399 Berea Road / corner Hunt Road (facing Berea Road)
Langton & Barboure, 1935.
41 apartments built for Langton. Stucco finish with good
mouldings in authentic Art Deco style. Fluted pilasters rise
through the façade to a crenellated parapet with lion features.
Central balcony at high level is richly decorated with sunburst
pattern and the entrance below has an African feel to the surround
mouldings.
Well-designed rear elevation with cantilevered walkway and an
amusing range of coloured glass and lead windows still remain to
some of the flat entrances.
Original milk bottle alcoves.
Top floor open for water tanks and lift shaft.
A range of excellent coloured glass and lead windows in lift stairwell.
Well maintained foyer. Recently renovated and re-painted by new owner for student accommodation.
SURREY MANSIONS, 323 Currie Road.
Langton & Barboure - William B Barboure, 1937.
One of the great Art Deco buildings. Eight-storey apartment building with
detailing of imagination and sensitivity. Block-like ground and first floors,
rounded corners up to a squared-off top floor and with fluted giant order
pilasters rising up the entire height.
Richly varied stucco reliefs with flying lions high up. Excellent resolution of
geometry in the use of rectangular and curved forms. Well maintained and
authentic colour scheme.
Top floor is open for lift shaft and water tanks.
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DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
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DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
CHEVIOT COURT, 676 cnr Musgrave Road & Poynton Place.
1940’s
A well maintained six-storey apartment block with notable flagpole and crest
motifs. Semi circular pavilion form on southwest and horizontal sunshades. Good
entrance. Redecorated in interesting colours.
Presently being repainted.
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THE CENOTAPH
Albert Luthuli (Frances Farewell) Square. Entrance in Dorothy Nyembe (Gardiner) Street.
The Durban War Memorial, Gardiner Street : 1921 (unveiled 1926), is the result of an architectural competition won by the
firm of Eagle, Pilkington & McQueen, Cape Town, the design being executed by A L Gordon Pilkington.
It is a memorial to the fallen of both World Wars and incorporates the Rolls of Honour of the two world Wars.
From the Dorothy Nyembe (Gardiner) Street side of the City Gardens, one enters the Sacred Acre through
bronze gates with stylised Art Deco bronze lions standing on either side, set on stone plinths. The body of
the fallen soldier lies at the base of the Cenotaph on a sarcophagus in bronze (by Percy Metcalf), and on the
granite obelisk faience glazed ceramic sculpture, the soul of the fallen warrior is being borne heavenward by
two angels. (‘faience’ tin-glazed or decorated earthenware or pottery – originally that made at Faenza in N.
Italy).
The blue and gold art deco sculpture was brought out in sections and
assembled on site, and the art deco bronze lions were used as ballast
during the long sea voyage.
The sculpture, executed in glowing colours in the manner of Della Robbia
(glazed ceramic ware or enamelled terracotta), was modelled and built by
Harold & Phoebe Stabler of Poole Pottery in England, where the completed
figure group was greatly admired.
The long lines of the blue draperies
and stylised wings with the white figure rising in a yellow sunburst is in the
most successful Art Deco manner.
This also set a pattern of faience glazed sculpture on public buildings which
were usually executed by the Linnware ceramic artists (all ladies and
mainly from Durban Art College) and also the pupils of Mr Adams who was
the Head of the original Durban Art College and who later went to England
and joined Poole Potteries. Linnware was established at the Olifantsfontein
studio, in the then Orange Free State.
The bright colours glow in the Durban sunlight and contrast well with the sombre granite and bronze, making
a fitting climax to the obelisk. The work was at first not appreciated by the Durban public who found the
bright colours ‘disturbing’ on such an emotional memorial.
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There is also a Delville Wood Cross in the Sacred Acre. Six crosses were sent to South Africa (2 in the
Castle in Cape Town - one for the HQ and one for the 1st Battalion); 1 in the Garden of Remembrance in
Pietermaritzburg (this cross is known as the weeping cross); 1 in the Chapel at St Johns College in
Johannesburg; 1 at the Transvaal Scottish at “The View” in Johannesburg; and 1 at the Cenotaph in Durban.
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DURBAN ART DECO SOCIETY
(Affiliated to ICADS – International Coalition of Art Deco Societies)
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