Oct 14 2013
Pinelands Garden City
Posted in Neighbourhoods in Focus
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Pinelands BP Garage
On Saturday 11th February 1922 the first Pinelands resident, Garth Cox, moved into 3 Meadway. This event was celebrated by a full page article in the Cape Argus.
Pinelands was the first Garden City in South Africa and the third Garden City in the world. During 1948 it became a full-fledged municipality.
Originally to be called Midwood, Pinelands is part of the original farm “Uitvlugt” which extended for several thousand acres across the then sandy and still desolate Cape Flats; on which the old Cape Colonial Government had laid out an economically unsuccessful forestry estate.
The original cost of plots was £6 19s. per 1,000 square feet, with the first plots selling for as little as £20 each. It was possible to obtain a house at Pinelands for a down payment of £40 or £50. Between August 1945, and the end of December 1947, homes sold at an average cost (including that of the land and legal expenses) of £2,500 each. Both single and double storied homes were produced and no two houses are exactly alike.
Read more of Pinelands history and origins >>HERE
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Laid out in 1923 and built on state land that previously formed part of the Uitvlugt Forest reserve, The Mead on Mead Way is the oldest surviving example of garden city planning in South Africa.
Following the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Cape Town (1901), the colonial health authorities invoked the then Public Health Act of 1897 and quickly established a location in Uitvlugt forest station. Africans renamed the Uitvlugt location Ndabeni (Place of News).
In 1957 all non residential areas north of the railway line, including Pinelands (already an exclusivly white area), Thornton Epping and Milnerton were zoned as white areas in the first Group Areas Proclamation. Black residents were given 1 year (until 7 July 1958) in which to vacate there homes.
The Mead was declared a National Monument on 4 June 1982.