All change around the old queen in Durban square
|Published
Durban’s marking of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee with a statue in Francis Farewell Square is the focus of the city’s history today.
The statue of Queen Victoria (1819- 1901) was erected in Durban in 1897 and stands much as it has since then.
The inscription on the plinth records that the statue was erected by the citizens of Durban to commemorate, “The Sixtieth Year of the Glorious Reign of their Beloved Sovereign, 1837- 1897”.
Much has changed around her.
In the old picture, there is a road between the square and City Hall. The area was closed to traffic – guessing by the bus and the fashionable men’s hat – in the 1970s, allowing pedestrians better access to the City Hall and the square, which began life as the Town Gardens when Durban was in its infancy. The buildings are the Martin West Building on the left and the Royal Hotel, on what was Smith Street.
The Martin West Building has been renamed the Florence Mkhize Building and still serves as one of the main municipal treasury offices.
The Royal Hotel has grown into a multi-storey luxury hotel, and the street on which they stand is now Anton Lembede Street.
The angle of the new picture is not quite the same as the old one because our photographer Shelley Kjonstad was minimising shadows across the old queen.
Independent on Saturday