Oranjezicht (
Dutch: ''
orange view'') is a suburb in the
City Bowl area of
Cape Town
Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...
, South Africa. It was built on the site of the old Oranjezicht farm, which used to stretch at least as far as the
Mount Nelson Hotel and supplied the
Castle of Good Hope with fresh produce.
History
In 1708, Nicolaus Laubscher (1651–1721), who had immigrated in the 1670s from the Swiss canton of Fribourg, bought a property on the slopes of Table Mountain that he called "Oranjezicht" because of the good view from there of the Oranje (Orange) bastion of the Castle. Subsequent to his death, the farm was evidently acquired by Pieter van Breda (1696–1759), who arrived at the Cape in 1719 from the Netherlands. "Oranjezicht" was a farm for the next two centuries.
Some of the buildings of the farm as well as the old
slave bell are still at the location where the farm once stood. The farmhouse was on the property directly to the east of what is now a public park and playground. It was torn down in the 1960s to make way for a bowling green, which was later replaced by the Oranjezicht City Farm, a non-profit community farm project celebrating local food, culture and community through urban farming in Cape Town, in 2013.
The
Molteno Dam was built in 1877, to provide water for Cape Town by storing natural spring water from
Table Mountain
Table Mountain (; ) is a flat-topped mountain forming a prominent landmark overlooking the city of Cape Town in South Africa.
It is a significant tourist attraction, with many visitors using the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway, cableway or hik ...
. At the time it was located on the mountain slopes above the infant city, but the city grew around it and it is now in the middle of the Oranjezicht suburbs. It is still in operation today.
[Heikki Vuorinen, "Environmental History of Water" (IWA Publishing, 2007), pp. 170–171.] The
Graaff Electric Lighting Works, commissioned in 1895, is located next to the Molteno Dam and was Cape Town's first municipal electrical power plant and the second power plant in South Africa.
Places of interest
*
St. Cyprian's School
*
Booth Memorial Hospital
*
De Waal Park
*
Molteno Dam
References
{{Authority control
Suburbs of Cape Town