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2025-01-19 at 18:24 #460081Nat QuinnKeymaster
Joburg train station abandoned for 24 years makes a comeback by Shaun Jacobs.
Located in the heart of Johannesburg’s historical CBD is the Old Park Station, one of the oldest surviving structures in the city that has been converted into an events space.
The station is a rare architectural gem that has been standing since before the Anglo-Boer War, with it opening to passengers in 1897.
Commissioned by the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek, the station was also the birthplace of Transnet, which was formed out of Park Station’s operator, the Netherlands South African Railway Company.
The Old Park Station was also a feat of engineering, with the entire structure being fabricated in the Netherlands and assembled in Johannesburg.
It was the largest single exercise in prefabricated architecture outside of the Witwatersrand gold mines.
Conservation architect Frances Woodgate estimated that the structure is the most travelled building in Johannesburg, transporting 16 million passengers a year at its height.
Strangely, for such an old building, the station has hardly stood still over its nearly 120-existence. Being prefabricated, the structure could be easily disassembled and moved to suit the needs of the government.
As a giant kit of parts, it was shipped from Rotterdam to Cape Town, from where it was transported to its original site at Park Station in Johannesburg.
This effectively split the city’s CBD into two parts, with the area south of the station being heavily developed and commercial while the northern area would be more residential.
The position was based on the location of a tiny tin shed that stood at a spot called ‘Park’ by the locals after Kruger’s Park just north of the stop. The park’s name would change in time to Old Wanderers.
This shed was conveniently located along a railway line from Boksburg to Braamfontein and would become known as Park Halt on the line, transporting coal into the city.
The erection of the station that still stands today began in 1896 and was completed a year later, including offices and restaurants.
It was also relatively opulent for the time, with a glass-domed roof and the offices and restaurants being made of carved oak.
However, in 1952, the structure was dismantled and moved 45 km to the Transnet railway training college at Esselenpark to make way for the redevelopment of the Park Station complex.
In 1993, the structure was dismantled again and transported another 45 km to this site in Newtown, with the ambition of it becoming a Railway Museum.
Woodgate said the total distance travelled by the station itself is approximately 15,250km – nearly twice the full length of the African continent.
The Old Park Station when it was first built. Source: UK National ArchivesThe Old Park Station was ultimately a victim of its own success, with its passenger numbers outgrowing the facilities.
This required a new station to be built, completed in 1932 and featuring twenty-eight painted panels by the artist Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef.
However, the new station on De Villiers Street would not last long either, with Park Station reaching a capacity of 130,000 passengers a day in 1945.
Once again, the government would have to plan for a new station to handle the growing passenger footfall and began negotiating to buy land from the Wanderers Club to build a larger concourse.
The Apartheid government ended up expropriating land from the Wanderers, paying the club a fee of £500,000.
In a strange twist of history, this forced the Wanderers Club to move to their new grounds at Kent Park in Illovo, where it remains to this day alongside the Wanderers Cricket Stadium.
The new station would be built in four phases between 1948 and 1965, creating the modern layout of multiple platforms, a shopping mall, and the construction of the Johan Rissik Bridge in 1952.
All the while, the Old Park Station was moved to its current location in Newtown to become a Railway Museum.
It is still in close vicinity to the railway lines it originally served and remains recognisable as a station platform structure.
However, it never became the railway museum it was intended to be. Instead, it was left empty and desolate. The Old station became a symbol of Newtown and architectural fascination.
The 24 years the station was left abandoned saw Johannesburg experience significant changes, with Newtown, in particular, undergoing rapid changes post-2000.
Transnet simply left the station to stand while it sold land to enable the building of the Carr Street motorway in 2003, cutting the area off on one side.
The state-owned company also then sold the land surrounding the structure, making it effectively an island of neglect in a rapidly changing city.
Developers such as Atterbury have been heavily involved in rejuvenating the surrounding areas through the construction of residential properties.
The city has also opened several museums in the area since the 1990s to soften some of its harsh industrial and commercial operations.
The structure’s most significant factor in the revival was the launch of The Station Market in 2017, which made the structure economically useful.
However, this did not work as intended, with the area becoming increasingly inhospitable to tourists and patrons of the market.
The best use of the station has been as an events venue, with Resident Advisor hosting several live music concerts in recent years.
Most notably, DJ and production crew Keinemusik performed in the space in 2023 alongside a group of local performers.
Events are held roughly every six months at the station, with the most recent being on 7 December 2024.
ActionSA famously used the station as the location to launch its manifesto in 2021, saying the site was a perfect example of good infrastructure destroyed by good governance.
Old Park Station today
source:Joburg train station abandoned for 24 years makes a comeback – Daily Investor
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