By Denis Conolly copyright 1992

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw a natural development of Cape Town when the first business centre midway between fashionable Sea Street (Strand Street) and the entrance to the Company's garden (the Avenue) came into existence. In what is today Greenmarket Square fresh produce was traded and in this area of commercial activity the first Burgher Watch House was built; it was completed in 1716. From here the surveilance of the security of the settlement was conducted and later the civic affairs of the comunity were adminitered. During Ryk Tulbagagh's term of office the original building was replaced by what is today the Old Town House; the foundation stone having been laid in 1755; it was only completed in 1761 at a cost of some 33 000 guilders.
The Old Town House with its extravagent front elevation is a rare example of the architecture of the era. A Coat of Arms of Cape Town presented by Commissioner J.A. de Mist was added in 1804, and in 1808 the versatile Herman Schutte added the bell-tower. Beautifully preserved, the building symbolises the development of local government in Cape Town. It served as the city's administrative centre for more than a hundred years, first by the Burgher Council of the Dutch East India Company and later by the Burgher Senate (a true municipal body) of the British occupation. From the time that the senate was abolished in 1828 until Cape Town was granted a municipal council in 1839, the building was used as a magistrate's court. From 1839 until 1905 when the City Hall facing the Grand Parade was opened, the Old Town House remained the chamber of local authority.
In 1916 the building was renovated by architect J.M Soloman, who transformed the interior to accept the magnificent collection of art presented to the city by Sir Max Michaelis in 1913. Augmented in 1932 by his widow Lady Michaelis, this is the finest collection of old masters in the country and includes 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings of Rembrandt, Jan Steen and Frans Hals.
The cobble-stoned Greenmarket Square itself (a large portion of which is today occupied as a flea market), the Old Town House and the facade of the Inn-on-the-Square are all national monuments. Here also is the strikingly beautiful Metropolitan Methodist Church which was opened in 1879, four years after the fountation stone was laid.


Strand Street Strand Street or Sea Street as it was then called, was one of the first thoroughfares of Cape Town; it extended from the Castle along what was then the beach front where the well-to-do merchants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had their homes. One private residence at No.23 and a unique group of buildings at 96 to 100 Strand Street are preserved today as historical monuments.
Koopmans de Wet House, 23 Strand Street, dates from 1701 when a thatched house was built on this erf granted by Willem Adriaan van der Stel to the affluent mastermariner merchant, Reynier Smedinga. During the surge of prosperity at the Cape towards the end of the eighteenth century a second storey was added, and Louis-Michel Thibault remodelled the front facade to give it the then popular so called Louis XVI style with its harmonious propotions, fluted columns, panels between lower and upper windows and graceful pediment. In the nineteenth century the house was acquired by the well-known de Wet family and eventually became the property of the influenttial Marie Koopmans de Wet. She had married a Crimean War officer with the name Koopmans. Today Koopmans de Wet House is part of the South African Museum and contains a priceless collection of Cape Dutch furniture and other antiques.
On the opposite side of Strand Street stretching to the corner of Buitengracht Street is the group of 18th century buildings, Nos. 96 to 100. The centre building, the Lutheran Church, was built in the guise of a warehouse 1774 by Martin Melck because the Company tolerated only the free worship of the Dutch Reformed Church. This changed in 1779.
The church which contains Anreith's magnificent octagonal pulpit, was rebuilt to a considerable extent in 1818 and is flanked by the Sexton's House (1779-1783 on the corner of Buitengracht Street and the Parsonage, architecturally the most important of the group. It was built in 1781 soon after Melck's death and named in his honour Martin Melck House in 1932 when the church authorities restored the building. Thibault was the architect and Anreith provided the moulded architraves, carved front door and the swan (Luther's symbol) on the front of the building. It is a typical example of the Cape townhouse with its dormer room or belvedere of four upper windows from which could be surveyed the whole of Cape Town and Table Bay.

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