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Broadway Industries
Foreshore, Cape Town, Western Cape
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Click to view map Coordinates: | This was the last building on the reclaimed foreshore of Cape Town, of which Roy KANTOROWICH - born in 1917 and trained at Witwatersrand and as a planner in the USA - was Chief Planning Officer. The office block was originally for the Chambers of Industries and Commerce, with banking facilities, a conference centre, and a club. The site was acquired by a private developer, with the basic requirements retained; but the conference hall became a cinema. It occupies a pivotal position of the city's expansion towards the sea. Its design was a conscious refutation of the International Style, and the architects adopted a regional-contextual language using local materials. Based on a grid of approximately two metres, the first three storeys were faced in constituted granite; the upper storeys of subdivisible offices were clad in facing bricks. The restricted window openings control light and heat in a generally non-air-conditioned building, and durable materials both inside and out proved eminently maintenance-free. Its pristine quality persists as a new direction in a local, non-derivative architecture. (G Skacel in UIA, 1985: 61) The building was generally known as the Broadway Building. Among other commercial functions it housed the Broadway Cinema. Adjoining the building on the northern side was the Monte Carlo Building with the Monte Carlo Cinema. Since at least 2009 (Google Street View) the two buildings house a BMW car dealership, among other tenants. The names Broadway and Monte Carlo no longer appear. References:
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