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Click to view map Coordinates: | [This station eventually superseded the functions of the Park Station : Second Main Station] Preliminary work on the new Johannesburg Park Station was commenced in 1946. The project entailed a vast building programme that would extend over a period of twenty years. The project turned out to be the most demanding test ever for the ingenuity and expertise of South Africa’s railway engineers. One of the most important early decisions was to lower all the tracks east of Harrison Street by about 4m. This would allow for the construction of all passenger concourses above the tracks at street level. At the same time, rail traffic was to continue during the construction period. It was therefore decided to implement the project in four stages. The first stage – amounting to a virtual replication of the old station further north and 4m deeper – was completed in September 1951. All trains were then diverted from the old to the new tracks. The second stage of the new Station development which entailed the lowering of the level of the old part of the station and the construction of more platforms and tracks was completed in February 1954. The portion remodelled in the first construction phase then became the new main-line station and the ‘old’ portion the suburban station. The second and third stages involved the construction of a concrete deck over the platforms and the concourses on top of those. These stages would have been completed within a few years were it not for the fact that the station was still being used by a substantial number of steam locomotives and diesel units daily. Although these were in the process of being replaced by electric units, the rate of construction continued to be dictated by the rate of replacement of the steam locomotives and diesel units as too much smoke and fumes trapped under the deck slab, would have endangered the well-being of passengers. The slab over the suburban station was completed in 1956 and that over the main-line tracks only in 1961. The Station was finally completed in 1965. [Text extracted from Bruwer 2017:111-112, see Historic layered development of the Johannesburg Park Station Complex and the Joubert Park Precinct] According to Chipkin (1993:254-256), the design solution consisted of twenty acres of continuous reinforced-concrete deck to cover the main-line and suburban tracks. This was the building podium that supported two vast concourses – ‘separate but equal’ facilities for ‘whites and non-whites’ – each set being long enough to cover sixteen platforms divided into main-line and suburban sections. This deck would support north and south administration and operations buildings as well as a large car-parking area ... the axes of the architectural layout of the new station complex were predetermined by the established east-west axis of the main-line railway traffic and by the north-south axes of the vehicle routes elevated above the railway tracks. The architectural design affirmed these inherent movement lines, providing a string of volumetric buildings to reinforce the north-south axis centred on Loveday Street. Two detached administration slab blocks – the eleven- storey South African Airways building on the west, the sixteen-storey Paul Kruger Building on the east – establish the counter-movements of the east-west axis ... The station complex reintroduced the third dimension into Johannesburg’s townscape: buildings became visible as geometric entities that occupy space .... This piece of state planning that created the vast station precinct is a major example in Johannesburg of the post-war concept of comprehensive planning ... The station buildings in their particularity are connected by their lines of force. But they are too scattered and fail to dominate their surroundings – too much space, too little architecture .. .The parking area placed prominently between the main concourse building and the Rissik Street bridge is a desolate, complicated civic platform. ... Because of the duplication of concourse space, on account of South Africa’s prevailing segregation laws [at the time of planning and construction], the white concourse building...is half empty [at the time of his writing], except for one-way, peak-hour surges. It lacks the constant bustle, movement and counter-movement, the ebb and flow of arrivals and departures ... The station architecture reveals that modern influences have been absorbed, paraphrased, and reinterpreted, but inside the syntax of the Modern Movement. There is a distinctly formal quality in the station design. The buildings are uniformly clad in off-white precast panels with carefully modulated courses creating an impression of discipline - a language that has emerged from the Modern Movement, .... There are distinctive Corbusier and post-Corbusier traces. These are visible at the north-end building, which is lifted off the lower deck on pilotis and whose rectangular inset windows are spaced out in blank walling. ... And there are the influences emanating from post-war Italian modernism. (Chipkin 1993:256). Of note are the number of bridges built to cross the 'steel river' of rail-lines that separated the city centre from its directly outlying suburbs and hinterland to the north (see for example Johann Rissik Bridge). The architects considered the design of these as being integral to that of the station complex. This vast project for realigning tracks some 4m lower required the expropriation of land including relocation of the Wanderers Cricket field and pavilions to Kent Park, Ilovo where they are to this day. A small plaque at the north end of the main concourse marks the fact that this is where test cricket had been played from 1896 to 1939, although, in truth, the exact place is occupied by the then 'non-white' concourse. Books and articles that reference Park Station - Third : Johannesburg Main Railway Station
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