Page 20 - Bulletin 7 2003

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That so much 18 and early 19 century architecture had already disappeared by the
time Elliott took his first pictures need not amaze us. As in Europe, only a little later,

the industrial revolution had set in, and the Cape Colony was a more rapidly
expanding community than any in Europe. Most of Cape Town’s streets changed

beyond recognition within a few decades, and there would have been something
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wrong if they had not. To deplore the losses of the 19 century and to bemoan all the
splendid buildings that were so tragically demolished to make way for new ones,

would be as pointless as a musicologist of our day bewailing the death of Haydn
(whose symphonies, it must be admitted, are still with us today).

More deplorable than all this is that after the turn of the century more was not done

to safeguard what was left. Elliott’s taking to photographing old houses, it must be

remembered, was symptomatic of a new awareness among the enlightened few of the
beauty of what the ‘Old Cape’ had produced. Cecil Rhodes bought old houses left

and right. Herbert Baker restored and copied them. Alys Fane Trotter and Dorothea

Fairbridge wrote books; Arthur Elliott illustrated them and General Smuts wrote
prefaces and argued in Parliament. Marie Koopmans-de Wet, Lady Florence Phillips,

Dr Purcell, Major Jardine and Sir Meiring Beck collected and saved where they
could, while Hugo Naude, Ruth Prowse, Nita Spilhaus, Pieter Wenning, Gwelo

Goodman and George Smithard preserved in paint.

That in spite of this increasing awareness so much still got lost – and countless

photographs in the book before you are evidence that it did – is more deplorable than
the much greater loss during a less history-conscious century. With so little left to

preserve in a city like Cape Town, surely it should have been possible to devise
means to save buildings like Nooitgedacht, Saasveld, Oranjezicht, Vesperdene, 131,

142 and 144 Bree Street, the Nieuwe Kerk and many others; yes and the entire
District Six – all demolished or spoilt after the idea of preservation had become

accepted in wider circles. And it is well to remember how near even the Castle – the

country’s most important historical monument, the Old Town House and the
Koopmans-de Wet House came to being pulled down.