Durban - The old pictures this week show the public toilets at the corner of West (today Dr Pixley kaSeme) and Gardiner (Dorothy Nyembe) streets.
There are two old pictures of the structure built during the Great Depression in the 1930s as a project to provide employment. The first is from reader Pat Hutton, which is a close-up and was probably taken soon after the completion of the facility, where you can clearly see the City Hall in the background. The second is from our library. This shows that it now houses the corporation bus office in the archway, which sold season tickets and timetables to the city’s bus service.
This was published on May 13, 1987, with the caption: “The Durban City Council may spend R255 000 to restore this public lavatory and ticket office on the corner of West and Gardiner Streets to its former glory.” Presumably that was a tidy sum in the late ’80s.
As Shelley Kjonstad’s modern pictures show, the bus office has been removed altogether and the arch now once again forms an entrance to the city’s Francis Farewell gardens.
On the website Facts About Durban, local historian Gerald Buttigieg remembers buying his bus season ticket to get to school at the office.
“This was bought at the bus office situated at the corner of Gardiner and West Street. The public toilets were on either side. Ladies on the left with a waiting room and Men on the right going down steps to a ‘subterranean’ facility. The bus office also served as a Lost Property depot and people finding bags, umbrellas etc. on the buses could deposit them there till the owners retrieved them. People were quite honest in those days. One also bought ticket coupon books there and picked up bus timetables,” he writes.
The season ticket was valid for a school term. “It was made of strong paper with a mesh backing. On the front particulars were printed and you entered your name. Just about every junior school pupil had a leather season ticket holder in which the season ticket was placed and this was attached to your school case handle. It was a bit of an infra dig for ‘seniors’ to have these season ticket holders attached to their cases so they carried them in their top blazer pockets.
“With the season ticket went a ‘Sports Season’ which also had to be obtained at the bus office. It was a plain card with some writing explaining its purpose.
“Season tickets were only valid till 4pm. If you had to attend after school sports or training, music, speech, dance classes then after 4pm you would have to pay the normal bus fare.”
On the website Durban Down Memory Lane, Norman Symonds has an unusual memory of the facility. “On the corner with Gardner were the public toilets, very clean and spotless, run by an elderly lady. When the old lady passed away after many years she was found to be a millionaire, from all her tips and gifts.”
Cheryl Myburgh remembers that one had to pay a penny to use the public toilets.
The Independent on Saturday