Parktown mansions
It is perhaps fitting that the next occupant of this famous house was none other than Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, the author of the best selling book 'Jock of the Bushveldt'.
Countless period homes and mansions were destroyed during the construction of the Wits Education Campus, Pieter Roos Park, the Johannesburg General Hospital and the M1 motorway.
Important architects included Leck and Emley, Aburrow and Treeby, James Cope Christie and Sir Herbert Baker and his partners Masey, Sloper and Francis Fleming.
1904, First Avenue designed by Baker, Masey and Sloper As early as 1890, before the establishment of Parktown, entrepreneur Edouard Lippert had created a plantation of over two million trees on a ridge just north of Johannesburg.
The house, Brenthurst, was built for the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa and became famous as the Oppenheimer residence in 1922.
[citation needed] Brenthurst gardens are open to the public on certain days each year and private tours can be arranged.
1905, 16 Victoria Avenue designed by James Cope Christie Baker was originally commissioned to build this house for Sir Charles Llewellyn Andersson but Andersson rejected his designs and employed Cope Christie to build his fairytale home.
The exterior of the house combines various styles including a strong Victorian influence with lots of iron work, art nouveau stained glass window panes and a fairytale domed turret with a weather cock.
The interior is said to be decorated with hunting trophies, Animal heads and period furniture, however public entry is not permitted.
1905, 15 Jubilee Road designed by Leck and Emley Exclusive and executive, Emoyeni is one of Johannesburg's prime estates.
This heritage site, perched on the highest ridge in Parktown, offers panoramic and breathtaking[tone] views extending as far as Magaliesberg.
Designed by architects Leck and Emley, and built in 1905 for the Honourable Henry Charles Hull, who was to become minister of finance in the first Union government, the house is faced with red brick with Tuscan colonnades and has Palladian windows, white eaves trim, stone insets and segmental pediments, being described as English Renaissance.
The house is characterised by its double-story wrap-around balcony, exquisite pressed-steel ceilings and ornate fireplaces in every room.
[1]: 138 1906, 17 Victoria Avenue designed by Henry Aldwyncle Often described as Parktown's most romantic, this house was modelled on period French castles.
The house has undergone minor renovations since its construction, which revealed two small, hidden rooms in the lodge framework, supposedly used for religious purposes.
Up until the late 1970s residents complained of temperature changes, inexplicable knocking sounds, strange music, poltergeist activity and an intense "evil" presence felt in the lodge body.
In March 1965 attention was drawn to North Lodge when residents James Earle Cunning and Jonathon Riley, who shared a room on the second floor, left the Lodge abruptly complaining of visual apparitions of an "older woman in a black cloak and a girl in a white dress".
The contrasts between Koppie stone quarried on site and plastered brickwork, the warm and comfortable wood panelled rooms and wooden floors and the very sensible usage of space exemplify this architectural style.
In line with the movement, the house was built by specialist craftsmen and masons rather than from manufactured parts which had become popular during the Industrial Revolution.
The house currently features all period furniture and has a good art collection including portraits of all of its historical residents.
1904, 7 Sherbourne Road, Designed by Baker and Masey The bells of St. Georges can be heard throughout Parktown every Sunday morning at 8.30 am and to announce weddings.
The Mount then housed the Wits Centre of Continuing Education and until recently was leased by the university from 1992–2012 to the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism.
The house is typically Victorian in Style, built from burnt red bricks with a corrugated iron roof, wooden balconies and large bay windows.
The house features a long veranda on the ground floor fronted by eleven arches with extensive views, stretching past the M1 motorway and overlooking the suburbs of Saxonwold, Forest Town and the city's zoo.
It is deemed significant for its association with the development of the SAR & H.[4] Aside from those listed above there are many other important Heritage homes still standing in Parktown.
[1]: 138 Built for Sir William and Lady Isobel Dalrymple,[1]: 138 they were famous for the lavish parties that they threw at their Westcliff home, Glenshiel.
Major Haggie immediately lent the house to the Order of St. John and it ran as a convalescence ward for wartime amputees until 1946.
In 1950 Haggie had the stables converted into a home in which his family live to this day and loaned the house to the Order of St. John indefinitely.
