Here’s an article I wrote about Hallmark House, the Maboneng Precinct’s most recent development project, for JHBLive. (Read the original JHBLive article.) I’m also working on a follow-up opinion piece about Maboneng, coming soon. Enjoy:

I have always thought of Maboneng as a place: a trendy place, along Fox Street on the east side of the Joburg CBD, where I go for breakfast at Market on Main on Sunday mornings or to eat Ethiopian food on Saturday afternoons. I go to Maboneng for art exhibitions, for urban photowalks, and to entertain my aunt from New York when she passes through Joburg on her way to the Kruger.

But I recently went to the opening of Hallmark House, a 15-story building on Siemert Road that Maboneng is redeveloping. And now I realise that Maboneng is not just a place. It’s a thing.

Looking up at Hallmark House, formerly called Hallmark Towers.

Propertuity, the company that created Maboneng, is buying buildings all over the city – branching out slowly from its little enclave along Fox Street – and earmarking those buildings for development. Hallmark House, formerly called Hallmark Towers, is the grandest Maboneng undertaking to date. Propertuity is transforming the tower into a residential building/retail centre/arts and entertainment space/boutique hotel.

The bedroom in the Hallmark House show apartment.

Did I mention that Hallmark House, which is being designed by a world-famous African architect and slated to become one of the most luxurious buildings in the city, is smack-dab in the middle of town? Right beside the Joe Slovo Drive off-ramp, around the corner from some uber-dodgey abandoned buildings? If you’ve ever gotten lost in this area and feared for your survival (which I have, several times), then you’ll understand why the location is significant.

View from the balcony of the Hallmark show apartment.

I arrived for the launch of Hallmark House on a Friday afternoon and traveled up to the 13^th floor using a confusing set of lifts. A thunderstorm had just passed through; traffic was terrible but the clouds were bunched perfectly along the horizon, waiting to inflame the sky at sunset.

The walls of Hallmark House, which was built originally as a diamond-polishing centre in the early 1970s, are nearly floor-to-ceiling with windows. The 13^th floor is currently empty save one show apartment in the northwest corner. I trotted the length and breadth of the floor like a puppy at the dog park, nearly 360 degrees around, forcing open every window and feverishly shooting pictures of the mind-boggling views.

Hallmark’s 13th floor.

View to the northeast. The mural is by graffiti artist ROA.

The show apartment was open and David Adjaye, the building’s award-winning Ghanaian architect with offices all over the world, was on hand to answer questions. The apartment was beautiful and David seemed like a great guy, but I couldn’t spare time to speak to him. I rushed from one end of the 13^th floor to the other, trying to capture as many of the infinite beautiful skyline shots as possible before the sun went down. The view. I couldn’t stop snapping that view.

A wider view to the northeast.

A view of Hillbrow to the north.

And finally, the flaming sunset.

I went back to Hallmark House three days later to take a proper look at the show apartment and to visit the roof, which is slated to house a Grand Café (the first in Joburg), a Bioscope Cinema, and an open-air gym.

I looked down on Metro trains cruising past the six-storey graffiti mural depicting African animals to the northeast, and the nine-story mural of Nelson Mandela shadowboxing to the southeast. I zoomed in on the sea of satellite dishes and laundry lines atop a building to the west. I gazed at the wall of high-rises in Hillbrow to the north.

View to the southeast from the roof of Hallmark House. The original Maboneng Precinct, five or six blocks away, is in the center of the photo.

I schemed about how I could scrape together a few hundred thousand rand to buy one of these apartments.

Joburg’s inner-city enthusiasts tend to have strong feelings about this place-thing called Maboneng. Some hail it as a vibrant urban mecca for local entrepreneurs and creatives. Others bemoan it as an exclusionary, overly gentrified inner-city haven for the rich. I have my own opinions but I’ll leave those for another article.

I will say, though, that Maboneng is accelerating the pace of change in an already fast-changing metropolis. Hallmark House is on the way to becoming one of Maboneng’s biggest change-catalysts and I can’t wait to see what happens next.