Built to engineer a city
Our picture of old Durban this week continues to look at the city’s own buildings, this week the City Engineer’s Department on 166 Old Fort Road, today KE Masinga Road. It’s in front of the City Estates building we featured last week and was built around the same time and in the same style.
Pulled from Independent Archive, the April 29, 1964, caption reads: “The imposing building on Old Fort Road housing the City Engineer’s Department has brought under one roof the many divisions and sections of the department. Before the building was erected to form the nucleus of the municipal centre, the department was housed in assorted buildings scattered around the city.”
The land on which the new City Engineer’s building was constructed was originally the Old Fort cycling track. The track was demolished on December 11, 1954, with a new combined athletics and cycling track built at Kings Park in 1958.
Today the city’s Engineering Department still inhabits the building and remains much the same, as photographer Shelley Kjonstad’s picture shows. It includes units responsible for roads provision, roads and stormwater maintenance, coastal stormwater and catchment management, development engineering, survey and land information, architecture development planning and management services and procurement.
The Independent on Saturday