Esselin Street Clinic

Table of Contents

About Esselin Street Clinic

Developed by the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation in consultation with the City of Joburg. Approximate installation date.

Address

17 Esselen Street, Hillbrow
2016

Inscription

ESSELIN STREET CLINIC Formerly Colin Gordon Nursing Home This is the work of a highly inventive architect who rejected the rational approach, choosing to express emotion in his buildings. In 1941 Wilhelm B. Pabst designed a bastion against dread disease using imagery from a castle. There are surgical cuts to be endured, a battery of injections, life hangs by a thread. Curves, squares, rectangles are all involved. There is nothing simple about diseaser, but medicine triumphs and over-sails the site boundaries with the array of balconies and the great Oriel window.

Photo courtesy: Kabelo Mokoena (Sunday Times)

Explore Joburg

A culmination of research gathered over many years, the Online Johannesburg Heritage Register is being launched on Nelson Mandela Day 18 July 2025.

Among the many heritage sites featured is Chancellor House, the downtown offices of Mandela and Tambo Attorneys in the 1950s. After having been vacant and shuttered for more than a decade, this iconic building is being revived and brought to life once again as offices for the Community Development Department, which oversees the City’s Arts, Culture & Heritage Services.