THE mystery of the diagonal room perched on top of a two-storey office block in Greenacres Ring Road has finally been solved – and I got the facts straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
Retired architect Rod Philip contacted me in response to my letter in The Herald on October 28 ("What's origin of diagonal room?") to say he had worked on the first phase of Greenacres in the late 1970s: the Checkers section. Remember that the entire area between Langenhoven Drive and Conyngham Road used to be taken up by the Fairview Race Course.
Indeed, I have colleagues who were at Collegiate Girls' High who recall being able from the school to watch horses being put through training. The main straights of the track ran parallel to Cape Road.
But what of that little room? Well Rod tells me it was the judges' room on top of a larger two-storey glass-fronted building. The building faced towards the finishing line, while the little room on top enabled the racing officials to keep a beadier eye on proceedings.
The original building, which once housed weighing rooms on the ground floor and a lounge with catering facilities on the first floor, is still there – but in a new guise.
He says when work started on Greenacres, architects Stauch Vorster, along with the engineers, used the building as a site office. Naturally that little upstairs room ended up being a perfect spot for a few drinks after work.
Once the project was over, instead of demolishing it, they constructed the rest of the X-shaped complex, integrating the original section into the overall design, with uniform cladding giving it its present modern look.
As I discovered when I visited Varsity College recently, that little top room is still in use – as a lecture room.
Kin Bentley, Port Elizabeth