The Kink in Bree Street

One version of the Bree Street kink story is that when the two surveyors were laying out the new city of Johannesburg, the Northern surveyor used ‘Cape Feet’ and the Southern surveyor used ‘Imperial Feet’. This is incorrect.

This fault line in the road was apparently due to mining activities around the birth of the mega-city in late 1886.  The Randjeslaagte Mining Syndicate had set up a camp and sunk a shaft somewhere between present day Pritchard Street and Bree Street. By trial and error these early miners found that the gold reefs lie South of what is today the M2 highway. Those central mine claims were abandoned and so the city of Johannesburg expanded beyond the first piece of land in the Randjeslaagte triangle.

In 1887, the government surveyor, Auret Pritchard was appointed to fill the gap in between Bree and Pritchard streets. As he planned the East West roads of Kerk and Jeppe Streets, he had a choice, either to line up with President Street and put the kink on Pritchard Street or to make the kink on the Northern boundary of this new city area.

In 1887 pedestrians, horses, buggies and carts filled these streets. It’s interesting to reflect that at the time this kink was insignificant, but with today’s traffic and location to the Noord Street taxi rank and the Bree Street taxi rank, rush hour traffic is now exacerbated by this kink.

Map collectors and old Joburg enthusiast like to buy these maps from me. Price range from about R500 to a couple of thousand Rand for the more decorative examples.