Jozi’s grande dames and mansions
• Hidden Johannesburg authors paint a picture of the Randlords’ city
A bugle sounded on the front steps whenever the extraordinary Mrs Josephine (Jose) Dale Lace departed in one of her carriages from her fabulous 40room Parktown mansion, Northwards.
The bugle call was to alert the neighbours of her departure so they could watch her leave — sometimes, it was said, in a carriage drawn by four zebras. Jose Dale Lace believed in keeping ahead of the Joneses.
Northwards is one of the surviving houses and buildings that appear in the book Hidden Johannesburg by Paul Duncan and Alain Proust. The book contains a number of historic Johannesburg houses and buildings that have been offered on online auctions.
Parktown was home to the fabulously wealthy Randlords who had moved there to escape the grit and grime of early Johannesburg. According to one young lady at the time, the town offered only dogs, dust and men. Of the three, she found the men “the most odious”.
The flamboyant and irrepressible Jose Dale Lace — wife of John Dale Lace, who made and lost a number of fortunes — was the leader of the Parktown social set. Sometimes she would drive her four-zebra carriage herself, expertly cracking the whip. Twice a week she bathed in milk to keep her skin supple.
She entertained lavishly at Northwards, which offered drawing rooms, a ballroom and minstrels’ gallery.
White footmen served guests lunch and tea.
The house was situated on a property of more than 3.5ha, which accommodated parklike gardens, a gatehouse, winding driveway and Dutch-styled stables with teak fittings. The house was decorated with Louis XV furniture.
It was believed that her son Lance was born as a result of an affair with the Prince of Wales.
She was an expert horsewoman and was the main attraction at the Rand Show in its early days.
Quite an achievement for someone who started life as Josephine Brink, a “Karoo meisie” from Richmond.
Lady Florence Phillips (nee Ortlepp), wife of Sir Lionel Phillips, was also a “Karoo meisie”, born in Colesberg. Sir Lionel at the time was head of Corner House (Rand Mines), which in its time was the biggest gold mining house in the world.
But in the end it all came to nought. In 1911 a fire destroyed the west wing of Northwards. John Dale Lace was experiencing crippling debt problems and not even Sir Lionel would come to his rescue.
By 1922 Jose was working in a dress shop in Johannesburg which the Parktown ladies would visit, to buy dresses but mainly to delight in her downfall. Of her end little is known except that at one time she was living in poverty in Rondebosch.
Sir George Albu, founder of General Mining, bought the house and restored it, and his family lived there until 1951 when it was sold to the SABC. Today it is owned by a trust.
The authors are less complimentary about the burnt red brick house, The View, with a wooden verandah balustrade, describing it as “rather ugly on the outside”.
Although only modern and high-quality building materials were used to build the house, it is not regarded by the authors as that remarkable, especially if compared with its neighbour, Hazeldene Hall. Incidentally, it is said that Hazeldene Hall was used by the Prince of Wales for his trysts with certain Johannesburg ladies when he visited SA in the 1920s.
The View and its owner Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Cullinan are a good example of the social upward mobility that existed in Johannesburg at the time. Sir Thomas, described as a bricklayer turned prospector, discovered and owned the Premier Diamond Mine where the Cullinan Diamond, called the Great Star of Africa, was found.
The View was built in 1896 to house Sir Thomas, his wife and 10 children. The growing family necessitated that the west wing, a mirror image of the east wing, be added in 1903.
Annie Cullinan lived in the house until 1960.
It is one of Johannesburg’s oldest surviving mansions and the only pre-Anglo Boer War mansion still intact.
Anstey’s Building, built in 1936 at the corner of Jeppe and Joubert Streets, was the grandest commercial building in Johannesburg at the time. And at 17 storeys, it was also the tallest, regarded as Johannesburg’s first skyscraper.
It is described as the most “spectacular Art Deco building which expresses its up-to-the minute modernity”.
Anstey’s was “where the modern woman shopped. Under one roof she could buy “a needle, a can of asparagus, lingerie, continental fashions in shoes or a fashionable dress from London”.
The department store once occupied the four-storey podium on which was built the taller structure. The building covered a large area off Jeppe and Joubert streets, which had become “the preening shopping area” which “catered for the carriage trade”.
It was one of Johannesburg’s most stunning Art Deco buildings, regarded as a city icon of the 1930s, which with Astor Mansions, “represented the optimism of the time”.