Adderley Street

Adderley Street

Adderley Street

Map showing Adderley Street and surrounding streets.
Location Cape Town, South Africa
Coordinates 33°55′17″S 18°25′27″E / 33.92139°S 18.42417°E / -33.92139; 18.42417

Adderley Street is a famous street in Cape Town, South Africa. It is considered the main street of the central business district (downtown) of Cape Town. The Christmas lights, night markets, main train station and numerous shops and restaurants and office towers are on this thoroughfare.

History

Adderley Street, c. 1900

The street was originally named Heerengracht, after the canal ("gracht") which ran down its centre, and which had its origins in the rivers from Table Mountain. At the time the street was more of a wide walkway beside the canal, which was crossed by various stone bridges.

The network of canals were covered over, throughout Cape Town, in the 1860s. The Heerengracht river and canal therefore became an underground pipe-line. For many years the street was residential, lined with large oak trees, but by 1850 it had become strongly commercial in character.

Mayor Hercules Jarvis named it Adderley Street in 1850, to honour British Parliamentarian Charles Bowyer Adderley (elevated to the peerage as Baron Norton in 1878) who fought successfully against the plan for the British government to make Cape Town into another penal colony.[1]

See also

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adderley Street, Cape Town.
  1. ↑ RFM Immelman: Men of Good Hope, 1804-1954. CTCC: Cape Town, 1955. Chapter 6 The Anti-convict Agitation. p. 154.

Coordinates: 33°55′17″S 18°25′27″E / 33.92139°S 18.42417°E / -33.92139; 18.42417

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, January 31, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.