On Sunday 2 June, 2024, Durban Art Deco Society organized an interesting walking tour along the north end of Musgrave Road on the Durban Berea. This area has a number of prime properties with well-maintained Art Deco residential buildings dating from the 1930s and 1940s. The walk was attended by 22 members and friends.

The tour was guided by local conservation architect Kirk White, who initially set out an objective to identify the gradation of buildings from the earlier embellished buildings into the more stripped down and asymmetric nature of the later buildings under the increasing influence of the “Modern” style. For contrast, the walk ended at Musgrave Mansions, a beautifully renovated 1922 apartment building in the “Berea Style”, where ornate decorative elements include Mediterranean type features such as arched balconies and windows,   roundels and barley-twists. Adjoining Musgrave Mansions was Springfield Mansions, built in “Union Period” style, when Cape Dutch gables were popularized throughout South Africa in recognition of the declaration of the union between the old British and Boer states.

Cheviot Court dates from 1934 and was designed by WS Payne & EO Payne. It is streamline modern with pronounced horizontal emphasis of string courses and eyeshades over the windows. The entrance features are symmetrical and reach to a flagpole at the skyline – yet the building is not symmetrical itself. Marie Sturgess arranged access for us to the foyer with is beautiful parquet flooring. An internal staircase starting in the foyer had to be climbed to the six floors of the building for the first seven years of its existence – until a lift was finally installed in 1941. An attractive arrangement of external stairs and balconies serves the back kitchen door of each flat.

St Aubyn Court dates fro 1935. Its distinctive features are its pattern of rounded balconies, an offset entrance and a free-standing art deco porte-cochère -  which someone remarked seems to serve little purpose except as a folly ! We were given entrance to the building by Michael Andreou. Noted were the spacious walkways, terrazzo staircase and a wood-panelled foyer with its original bench. The outside corridors had linoleum flooring (made from solidified linseed oil, resin and fillers – a machine age product?).

Ainsdale is a lightly-decorated Art Deco building in an L-shaped plan, which uses some other interesting mechanisms to create a visual feast. The two wings are copies of each other, each with a central projecting bay rising to the skyline with a series of small balconies. This feature on the north wing has the entrance at the bottom, with its chequered terrazzo floored foyer. The facades step in and out creating a horizontal pattern. Entrance to the building was arranged by Lenny Diedrichs, and we were able to view a top floor flat courtesy of Prakash Bhika. Noted were the stepped arches over the flat doorways, and a milk-bottle niche for each flat.

At the intersection of Musgrave and Sandile Thusi Roads we were able to view Gleneagles, and further along Musgrave Road, a new “Art Deco Revival” block, named Hertford, could be seen. Gleneagles was clearly closer to the “modern style”, with no symmetry, an inconspicuous off-set entrance, and little decoration.

The last port-of-call was the relaxing calm of Musgrave Mansions in the Berea style, with its beautiful courtyard garden, surrounded by the arched walkways for the flats. This building is to be congratulated on its excellent recent renovation. Our researches date this building from 1922, and suggest that W.G. Hobbs was the architect. The fact that W.G. Hobbs signed off a garage addition for the owner Mrs Gatenby in 1925 stirs up images of Tamara de Lempicka in her green Bugatti ! Our access to this building was kindly arranged by Selma Botha who, together with her body corporate members, also gave us access to four of the flats. With arched frames and original fittings and flooring, and high ceilings, these interiors give a real sense of the period.