Parktown

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Parktown is a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, located just north of the city’s inner area. It’s one of Johannesburg’s oldest and most prestigious “Park” suburbs, with Parkview, Parkwood, Westcliff, Parktown North, Parkhurst and Forest Town nearby. Parktown West is the western part, mostly residential, with some shops along the main road.

In the 1890s, Randlords created Parktown as an elite neighborhood. Rich families built grand mansions on a ridge with sweeping views, drawing on Cape Dutch and Edwardian styles and using local stone. The area is known for its historic houses and for being connected to the Jameson Raid conspirators. Many of these mansions were later demolished in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for schools and the M1 motorway, but some impressive homes still remain.

Today, Parktown mixes quiet residential streets with business and education. It hosts three University of the Witwatersrand campuses—the Education Campus, the Medical School, and the Wits Business School. Transnet Freight Rail has its head office in Inyanda House there.

Parktown is also a center for arts and culture. The Linder Auditorium at the Wits Education Campus hosts the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. The nearby Williams Block houses the Johannesburg Youth Orchestra Company, and the Johannesburg Children’s Theatre operates in what used to be Parktown mansions. The South African Ballet Theatre and the SA Youth Ballet are nearby in Braamfontein. The area includes a variety of churches and temples, including Temple Emanuel, a Reform synagogue, several Christian churches, and the Johannesburg Freemasons’ Hall.

Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner in 1991, lived on Jan Smuts Avenue in Parktown for over fifty years. Today Parktown remains a historic, cultured, and vibrant part of Johannesburg, blending elegant homes with universities, offices, and cultural venues.