The fab Carlton Centre has fallen

Mail & Guardian

5 days ago

The higher they stand…: The Johannesburg CBD's Carlton Centre was once iconic. Photo: The Heritage Portal
If you ever stood at the base of the Carlton Centre and craned your neck to take it all in, you'll understand why its decline is one of Jozi's most significant urban losses.
Rising 223 metres into the Joburg skyline, the Carlton Centre Tower was once the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. At the time it was nicknamed 'Africa's Skyscraper'. But today, it's a relic of a time when Johannesburg dreamt bigger than anywhere else on the continent.
Construction on the Carlton Centre began in the 1960s, led by architects Gordon Bunshaft of SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) and local firm Rhodes, Harrison, Hoffe and Partners. Funded by Anglo American and South African Breweries, it was a marvel of its time.
Completed in 1973, the tower soared 50 floors above Commissioner Street. At its peak, it wasn't just a place of business, it was the beating heart of high society, finance, retail and luxury accommodation. The building was so vast that it held more than 53 000m2 of lettable retail space and 68 000m2 of office space. It even had an ice-skating rink, the Sky Rink, on the 20th floor, which was later converted into a film studio.
But the Carlton Centre wasn't just one building; it was a complex. Its better-known component was the Carlton Hotel. Or should I say hotels. There were three. Not many people are aware of each hotel's history.
Excavations for the original Carlton Hotel began in 1898 but construction had to halt when the South African War broke out the following year. Construction by Barnadot-Joel Mining Company resumed in 1903, and the Carlton Hotel opened its doors on 16 February 1906. This was a highly anticipated event on the social calendar of the time.
I learned something that many Joburgers do not know in the book Johannesburg Then and Now by Marc Latilla.
This hotel was designed by the architectural firm TH Smith in collaboration with architect William Leck. They developed a three-level basement (a first for development in Johannesburg at the time) that included a Turkish bath and a marble swimming pool. The retail area featured numerous shops catering to the hotel's guests.
Measuring 43 500m2, it was six storeys tall, consisting of 199 hotel rooms distributed across five floors. Each room was equipped with air-conditioning, central heating, a central vacuum cleaning system, waterborne sewage, emergency power and a private telephone.
The hotel struggled and went up for auction in 1922. In 1936, the Carlton Hotel's new owner, Isidore W Schlesinger, renovated the hotel and added a ballroom along with three new storeys. Sadly, in 1964, the Carlton Hotel was demolished by the owner's son, John Schlesinger, to make way for new developments.
Today, on the corner of Eloff and Commissioner streets, we see the African Life Centre building. This building was completed in 1970 and designed by Monty Sack.
The modern Carlton Hotel that is at 150 Commissioner Street has 31 floors with 663 rooms. It opened its doors in 1972. It quickly became the go-to hotel for visiting dignitaries, celebrities and heads of state.
The third Carlton hotel, Carlton Court, was a plush 66-room annexe built in 1982 as a later addition to the Carlton legacy. It was connected to the central hotel across the road by a skybridge. Each suite came with its own jacuzzi, and the building featured an exclusive, members-only restaurant.
Carlton Court is a continuation: a later chapter in the evolving story of the Carlton brand, guided by the same international hotel operator of the modern Carlton hotel, the Western International Hotels. It closed in 1998.
Back to the modern Carlton Hotel that we know. Nelson Mandela often stayed there, and he delivered his ANC election victory speech in the ballroom. The guest list is a who's who of global names: Hillary Clinton, Chris Barnard, Harry Oppenheimer, Margaret Thatcher, Whitney Houston, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Naomi Campbell, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Its international status allowed people of all races to mix freely on the premises, no small feat in apartheid South Africa.
Its restaurant, Three Ships, was legendary. The hotel was running at a loss and closed in 1998 because of low occupancy rates caused by the decay of Johannesburg's city centre. Its contents were sold to the Protea Hotel in Gold Reef City, where a replica of the original restaurant exists. But nothing can ever truly recreate the magic of the original building.
The Carlton Hotel was a symbol of prestige. Its underground parking alone had 2 000 bays. And through a retail tunnel beneath Commissioner Street, it was seamlessly connected to the Carlton Centre's shopping arcade, which had more than 180 shops.
Despite its grandeur, the complex couldn't escape the gravitational pull of the declining city centre. She rose, she sold, and then there was silence.
By the late 1990s, the area around the Carlton Centre had become riddled with crime and neglected. The glamour of downtown had drifted north to Sandton and Rosebank.
Anglo American, which had become the sole owner after buying out SAB's stake, sold the entire Carlton Centre Complex to Transnet in 1999 for just R33 million. To put that into perspective, the building had cost R88 million to construct back in the 1970s, and today its estimated replacement value would be more than R1.5 billion.
The hotel remains closed. The tower and retail sections are operational, but not at full potential.
There have been murmurs over the years about converting the complex into affordable housing or reviving the hotel as a casino, but nothing has ever materialised. A casino plan, by a Malaysian investor group, fell through because of the failure to secure a gambling licence.
And so, the doors have stayed shut. The ballroom silent. The rooftop deserted.
As someone who writes often about capital growth, yield and reinvestment potential, the story of the Carlton Centre is to me a stark reminder of a universal truth when it comes to the importance of location in real estate. More than building height, more than marble finishes, more than celebrity footfall, the surroundings of your investment will directly affect its potential for capital growth.
A property, no matter how grand, is only as strong as the community, infrastructure and economic ecosystem that surrounds it. That's where the Carlton Centre got left behind. The Johannesburg city centre, once vibrant and cosmopolitan, fell victim to urban flight, municipal neglect and rising crime rates. As the city expanded northward, investment followed. Sandton, in particular, exploded with new developments, better infrastructure, security and a perception of safety. That shift in energy starved Joburg's centre of the oxygen it needed to remain competitive.
Buildings like the brutalist Carlton were left to age. This isn't only about a building, it's about urban decay, poor governance and the missed opportunity of repurposing legacy infrastructure. It's about the cost of letting history go.
The Carlton Centre was more than a landmark, it was a monument to ambition, design excellence and what South Africa could achieve when it bet big on itself. It is a loss for the landscape of Jozi. That's what makes its current state feel so tragic. We didn't just lose a luxury hotel, we lost a piece of collective identity.
Imagine if the top floor, with its full 360-degree panoramic view of Johannesburg were turned into a world-class restaurant, art gallery or sky bar. Imagine a revitalised Carlton Hotel reimagined for a new generation of travellers and infused with culture, heritage and style. Imagine a retail arcade filled with proudly South African brands, artisans and makers. The surrounding area would need to speak the same language.
I visited the top of this tower on the 50th floor many years ago. Seeing the City of Gold from this 360-degree view was an overwhelming experience. A city full of promise. The view from Jozi's tallest towers are always a humbling and exhilarating experience. It's now a bittersweet memory.
We often speak about property in terms of numbers: yields, square metres, price per square metre. But buildings also carry emotions. They're woven into our memories. And few buildings in South Africa have played as big a role in our public imagination as the Carlton.
Have you ever visited the Carlton Hotel? Attended an event at the ballroom? Shopped in the underground mall? Please email me with your memories; I'd love to hear your stories.
Ask Ash examines South Africa's property, architecture and living spaces. Continue the conversation with her on email (