Adderley Street

Adderley Street is a street in Cape Town, South Africa. It is considered the main street of the central business district (downtown) of Cape Town. The Christmas lights, night markets, main train station and numerous shops and restaurants and office towers are on this thoroughfare.

Adderley Street
From the top, an aerial down Adderly Street with Table Mountain in the background. A view of Adderley Street from ground level.
Adderley Street
Map showing Adderley Street and surrounding streets.
LocationCape Town, South Africa
Coordinates33°55′17″S 18°25′27″E
Adderley Street, c. 1900
Adderley Street, Cape Town in the 1950s, looking south from Strand.
Stuttafords department store in Adderley Street, 1957

History

The street was originally named Heerengracht, after the canal ("gracht") which ran down its centre, and which had its origins in the rivers from Table Mountain. At the time the street was more of a wide walkway beside the canal, which was crossed by various stone bridges.

The network of canals were covered over, throughout Cape Town, in the 1860s. The Heerengracht river and canal therefore became an underground pipe-line. For many years the street was residential, lined with large oak trees, but by 1850 it had become strongly commercial in character.

Mayor Hercules Jarvis named it Adderley Street in 1850, to honour British Parliamentarian Charles Bowyer Adderley (elevated to the peerage as Baron Norton in 1878) who fought successfully against the plan for the British government to make Cape Town into another penal colony.[1]

Adderley Street was the original main street of the city centre shopping district with large department stores such as Stuttafords (SW corner of Hout Street, going through to St Georges Mall, now Edgars et al.), Garlicks (at Exchange Place across from Cape Town railway station),[2] Fletcher & Cartwrights, and Thomas, Watson & Co. In the late 1800s the street was a "riot of ornament" along which around 150 retail shops plied their trade, many with wrought iron decorating the outsides of their buildings.[3] The street remains a retail centre today, with branches of Woolworths, Edgars, Truworths and shopping centres such as the Golden Acre with Ackermans, Shoprite and Mr Price.[4]

It is also has long been a financial centre with the Colonial Bank located on the site of the Stuttafords Building until 1890, and the imposing Standard Bank Building on the east side at Hout Street. The upper end marked political and religious authority, the location of St. George's Cathedral and the Supreme Court of South Africa.[3]

See also

References
  1. RFM Immelman: Men of Good Hope, 1804-1954. CTCC: Cape Town, 1955. Chapter 6 The Anti-convict Agitation. p. 154.
  2. "From one Cape store to establishments in every major centre". Cape Times. 16 October 1981. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  3. Worden, Nigel. Cape Town: The Making of a City: an Illustrated Social History. p. 214–216.
  4. Google Maps, accessed July 5, 2020
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