A new station at last!

After the erection of the new office block for the General Manager and other station staff in 1905, not much more than a few platforms and a collection of temporary wood and iron structures were erected at Park Station. Again, after the First World War the tremendous increase of traffic in goods and passengers made the enlargement of the station a matter of urgency.

However, these turbulent years hardly produced a climate in which a large sum of money cold be extracted from Parliament for the building of a new station for Johannesburg. Yet in 1924 the SAR administration succeeded in doing so. An amount of £250 000 was secured 'as an initial instalment of the cost of a scheme to give Johannesburg a railway station commensurate with its importance as the centre of the most densely populated area of the Union and the world's largest gold-producing industry", as the General Manager put it in his report for 1927. The total cost for the new station as estimated in 1927 was £650 000, an astronomical figure for those years.

Building work on the new station started in earnest in 1927, but three years later the country was gripped by, some say, the worst economic depression and drought in known history. So the grand plans for Park Station had to be scaled down. This included the loss of the majestic elephant sculptures which were to adorn the main entrance. Nevertheless, Johannesburg, in 1932, had a station which won wide acclaim domestically and abroad for its fine architectural characteristics and practical suitability as a passenger and parcels station.

The grand plans for the South Station Building proposed by the architects Gordon Leith and Gerard Moerdijk had to be scaled down. This included the loss of a grand station entrance at the top of Eloff Street, which at the time was gaining the reputation of being the most important shopping street in Southern Africa. In his perspective drawings Leith designed a vaulted arch clerestory and two giant pedestals topped by two sculptures of African elephants. Instead, the three entrances were crowned by a flat frieze and three flattened elephant heads, sculpted by Anton van Wouw. Writer Herman Charles Bosman critically described the entrance as a 'false attempt at drama that makes Park Station an eyesore.'

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