Shop till you drop

The old picture this week is a view down Durban’s main commercial thoroughfare, West Street, today Dr Pixley kaSeme Street, looking towards the Berea where you can see the Memorial Tower at the University of KwaZulu Natal on the hill.

The intersection in the foreground is with Field Street, today Joe Slovo, and in the foreground you can see the Stuttafords Building, with OK Bazaars behind it and Truworths next. The Greenacres building is a little further on. Also in the mix is Dodos which was a shoe and ladies’ dress shop and Dodo’s Arcade. Murchies Passage is further down. When the OK Bazaars building opened in 1957, it was advertised as “Durban’s most modern store” boasting the latest airconditioning, lifts and elevators.

The Memorial Tower Building, with its strongly Art Deco influence, was built to commemorate students who had died in WWII. The building, which cost £235 000, was begun in 1948 and completed in 1972. It was declared a National Monument on 7 March 1986.

West Street at this point was open to two way traffic which changed in the late sixties with the development of the Western Freeway from Berea Road. At this time neighbouring Smith Street, today Anton Lembede, became one-way leaving town. So the picture was probably taken in the late 1950s or early sixties.

The scene today shows a very different city. To get the Memorial Tower in the shot, an informal trader kindly allowed me to stand on their table to get above the stream of taxis coming down Dr Pixley kaSeme. It’s also slightly further back from the original picture. It was unfortunately an exceptionally murky day, and along with the city’s deteriorating air quality, the tower is just a blur in the background.