Rand Water Board Building

The Rand Water Board was established in 1903, tasked with supplying the water needed to support mining activities and sanitary living conditions for those living in the developing urban area of Johannesburg.The Rand Water Board Building extension to the Fraser Street offices was the third in a series of buildings owned and occupied by the Rand Water Board (RWB) of Johannesburg before the relocation to large purpose built modern premises in Rietvlie.For clarity, this entry details the history and development of each successive building in chronological order. Please note that the original Rand Water Board Building of 1925 has been demolished.Building 1: The original Rand Water Board Building, Commissioner StreetSince its establishment in 1903, Rand Water Board had always made use of rented accommodation. The first meetings of the board were in fact held at the Rand Hotel. Once the board gave its approval for the undertaking two business stands, numbers 23 and 24, were purchased in Commissioner Street (‘Marshall’s Township’) for £9250.The Rand Water Board Building was a Neo-Classical building on Commissioner Street designed by the firm of Gordon Leith & Partners in 1925 and built by Messrs Harper Bros. The consulting architect of the project was G.E.G. Leith (1886-1965), a South African-born, but British-trained architect who had worked under Herbert Baker when the Union Buildings were designed at the turn of the century. The new building’s design was in the Beaux Arts tradition and it reminded one of the station building in Pretoria – also a Herbert Baker design.In 1926, the ~8150sqft building was altered by the architects to enhance the facilities for the Rand Water Board. However, by the mid-1930s, it was clear the Board had insufficient office space in the building. It was proposed, at the time, to add an additional floor to the existing building but this idea was soon dismissed in favour of purchasing a suitable site elsewhere in the city for the erection of a new building that would meet the RWB’s current and future office accommodation requirements. The organization, in the interim, had to rent additional office space.