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Sea Point

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For other uses, see Sea Point (disambiguation).

Template:Infobox South African town 2011 Sea Point (Afrikaans: Seepunt) is one of Cape Town's most affluent and densely populated suburbs, situated between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean, a few kilometres to the west of Cape Town's Central Business District (CBD). Moving from Sea Point to the CBD, one passes through first the small suburb of Three Anchor Bay, then Green Point. Seaward from Green Point is the area known as Mouille Point (pronounced MOO-lee), where the local lighthouse is situated. It is neighbored to the southwest by the suburb of Bantry Bay.

Sea Point is the only sea-side suburb of Cape Town with significant high-rise development and this, along with other factors, has made it a very popular residential area, or for investing in first or second homes and apartments. Before the most recent surge in property values, the suburb used to be regarded as a dangerous area, in part because some apartment blocks had been neglected by absentee landlords. Many foreign and local investors now see it as a place of urban rejuvenation and there are many Dutch, German and British owners.

Demographics

The area was historically classed as an abode for whites only during the apartheid era, when formal classification of people by race was introduced into the South African political system. With the collapse of apartheid and especially from the late 1990s, a diverse mix of purchasers became active in the property arena and changed the demographic mix. Today Sea Point is home to a more diverse set of cultures. There is a cosmopolitan mix of Capetonians and international visitors.

Layout and lifestyle

Sea Point Beach Front with Lion's Head as a backdrop

Sea Point is a suburb of Cape Town and is situated on a narrow stretch of land between Cape Town's well known Lion's Head to the south-east and the Atlantic ocean to the north-west. It is a high density area, where space is at a premium. Houses are built in close proximity to one another towards the surrounding mountainside, while apartment buildings are more common in the central area and toward the beach-front. An important communal space is the beach-front promenade, a paved walkway along the beach-front used by residents and tourists for walking, jogging or socialising.

Along the litoral of the Sea Point promenade, the coastline has varied characteristics. Some parts are rocky and difficult of access, while other parts have broad beaches. Sea Point beach adjoins an Olympic-sized seawater swimming pool, which had served generations of Capetownians since at least the early fifties. Another fine beach further towards the city is known as Rocklands.

The Sea Point Pavilion Swimming Pool

Adjoining Sea Point is Three Anchor Bay. The beaches along this stretch are in the main covered with mussel shells thrown up by the ocean, unlike the beaches of Clifton and Camps Bay, which are sandy. The rocks off the beaches at Sea Point are in large part basaltic, of late Precambrian age and internationally famous in the history of geology (vide infra).

There are extensive beds of kelp offshore. Compared to the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula, the water is colder (11 °C - 16 °C).

Sea Point Beach with the Beach Front Promenade

Further along the coast, going towards Clifton, there is a plaque overlooking the rocks. This commemorates Charles Darwin's observation of a rare geological interface, where igneous rock has invaded, absorbed and replaced metamorphic rock.

The community of Sea Point was the subject of a 2008 documentary film directed by François Verster, entitled Sea Point Days.[1]

Graaf's Pool, a beachfront tidal pool partially demolished in 2005, was the subject of a short film entitled "Behind the Wall", which contrasted the pool's origin story of Lady Marais, paralysed from the waist down from childbirth, whose husband built the pool for her as a private bathing area in the thirties, and the Sea Point gay scene, which adopted the pool as a cruising ground between the 1960's and the turn of the century. [2]

Local schools

Schools in the area include Sea Point Primary School and Sea Point High School (formerly Sea Point Boys' High School) founded in 1884,[3][4] and Herzlia Weizmann Primary. The French School of Cape Town opened on 14 October 2014[5] after an R18m upgrade of the old Tafelberg Remedial School.[6] The primary school campus of the French school is in Sea Point.[7]

History

Early map of Sea Point and its infrastructure. ca. 1906.

Some of the first settlers in the area were the aristocratic, Protestant Le Sueuer family from Bayeux in Normandy. Francois le Seuer arrived in 1739 as spiritual advisor to Cape Governor Hendrik Swellengrebel. The family’s Cape estate, Winterslust, originally covered 200 acres on the slopes of Signal Hill. The estate was later named Fresnaye, and now forms part of the suburbs of Sea Point and Fresnaye.[8]

Sea Point got its name in 1776 when one of the commanders serving under Captain Cook, Sam Wallis, encamped his men in the area to avoid a smallpox epidemic in Cape Town at the time. It grew as a residential suburb in the early 1800s, and in 1839 was merged into a single municipality with neighbouring Green Point. The 1875 census indicated that Sea Point and Green Point jointly had a population of 1,425. By 1904 it stood at 8,839.[9]

Cape 1st Class (4-4-0T) 1875 no. 4

With the 1862 opening of the Sea Point tramline, the area became Cape Town's first "commuter suburb", though the line linked initially to Camps Bay. At the turn of the century, the tramline was augmented by the Metropolitan and Suburban Railway Company, which added a line to the City Centre.[10]

Round Church or Solomons Temple - Sea Point Cape Town - 1906

During the 1800s, Sea Point's development was dominated by the influence of its most famous resident, the liberal parliamentarian and MP for Cape Town, Saul Solomon. Solomon was both the founder of the Cape Argus and the most influential liberal in the country - constantly fighting racial inequality in the Cape. His Round Church (St John's) of 1878 reflected his syncretic approach to religion - housing 4 different religions in its walls, which were rounded to avoid "denominational corners". "Solomon's Temple", as it was humorously known by residents, stood on its triangular traffic island at the intersection of Main, Regent and Kloof roads, a centre of the Sea Point community, until it was destroyed by the city council in the 1930s.[11]

1 Saul Solomon - Cape Politician CT

The suburb was later classed by the Apartheid regime as a whites-only area, but this rapidly changed in the late 1990s with a rapid growth of Sea Point's black and coloured communities.

Ships entering the harbour in Table Bay from the east coast of Africa have to round the coast at Sea Point and over the years many of them have been wrecked on the reefs just off-shore. In May 1954, during a great storm, the Basuto Coast (246 tonnes) ended up on the rocks within a few metres of the concrete wall of the promenade.[12] A fireman who came to the assistance of the crew was swept off the wall of the swimming pool adjacent to the promenade by waves and was never seen again. The vessel was soon thereafter salvaged for scrap. In July 1966 a large cargo ship, the S.A. Seafarer, was stranded on the rocks only a couple of hundred metres from the Three Anchor Bay beach. The stranding was the cause of one of Cape Town's earliest great environmental scares, owing to the cargo including drums of tetramethyl lead and tetraethyl lead, volatile and highly toxic compounds that in those days were added to motor fuels as an anti-knocking agent. The ship was gradually destroyed by the huge swells that habitually roll in from the south Atlantic. Salvage from the ship can still be found in local antique shops.

In the mid to late 1990s the area experienced a rise in crime as drug dealers and prostitutes moved into the area. However due to the aggressive adoption of broken windows municipal management spearheaded by then area councillor Jean-Pierre Smith the crime rate declined throughout most of the 2000s.[13]

On the morning of 20 January 2003 nine men were killed in a brutal attack at the Sizzler's gay massage parlour in Sea Point. All had been tied up, shot in the head, and had their throats slit. One man survived, despite a bullet to his head. The two killers were found guilty in the Cape High Court on nine counts of premeditated murder, one of attempted murder, and one of armed robbery. At the time of sentencing, Judge Nathan Erasmus described the slayings as the "worst massacre that Cape Town and the country have ever seen".[14]

Sea Point forms part of Ward 54 in The City Of Cape Town, and is represented by Democratic Alliance councillor Jacques Weber.[15]

Famous people from Sea Point

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sea Point.

References

  1. ^ "Sea Point Days". Sundance Channel. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  2. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8bVFRHGWd0
  3. ^ http://www.spps.wcape.school.za
  4. ^ Botha, P (March 2014). "Sea Point High School – 130th Birthday: Established 21 April 1884". The Good Times. 2 (1): 16. Archived from the original on 12 October 2014. Retrieved 12 October 2014. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ "French School opens New Campus in Sea Point" (Archive). Orange South Africa. Retrieved on 22 January 2015.
  6. ^ McCain, Nicole. "SEA POINT WELCOMING THE FRENCH." People's Post. 13 February 2014. Retrieved on 22 January 2015.
  7. ^ "CONTACT." Cape Town French School. Retrieved on 22 January 2015. "Lycée Français du Cap 101, Hope Street - Gardens 8001 Cape Town South Africa" and "Ecole Française du Cap Corner Tramway and Kings road - Sea Point 8005 Cape Town South Africa"
  8. ^ Green, L: I Heard the Old Men Say. Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1964. Chapter 17 "Sea Point was a Paradise" http://archive.org/stream/IHeardTheOldMenSay/IHeardTheOldMenSay_djvu.txt
  9. ^ http://www.sahistory.org.za/places/sea-point
  10. ^ http://thepropertymag.co.za/industry-news/605-sea-point-on-the-boardwalk-.html
  11. ^ Green, L: I Heard the Old Men Say. Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1964. Chapter 5, "Tower and Bells".
  12. ^ http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/2216/text/MARITIME.TXT&date=2009-10-25+07:52:12)
  13. ^ Witness - Battle of Sea Point. Al Jazeera. January 15, 2009.
  14. ^ http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/sizzlers-massacre-remains-a-mystery-1.386298#.VFDoXodB21A
  15. ^ https://www.capetown.gov.za/en/CouncilOnline/Pages/ViewCouncillorDetails.aspx?CouncillorId=8445
  16. ^ http://m.news24.com/channel24/Music/FeaturesInterviews/Carstens-Considers-Us-20091026
  17. ^ http://www.jacana.co.za/ebooks/1340-ben-trovato
  18. ^ http://www.randomreads.co.za/blogs/in-praise-of-sea-point/151
  19. ^ http://www.iziko.org.za/calendar/event/opening-platos-cave-the-legacy-of-kevin-atkinson-1939-2007
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