Where to Stay in Springs, Gauteng

What is Springs known for?

Springs holds the second-largest number of small-scale Art Deco buildings in the world after Miami, most of them put up in the central business district between the wars, when the town grew fastest. The Central Fire Station of 1938 is one example, and the Court Chambers, Renesta House, the Palladium Cinema and Nureef House are known for their lettering. Gold paid for it.

By the late 1930s the eight mines around Springs made it the largest single gold-producing area in the world. Nadine Gordimer, the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born and raised here.

What are the main landmarks in Springs?

The Art Deco centre is the main sight, with the Central Fire Station of 1938, the Court Chambers, Renesta House, the Palladium Cinema and Nureef House among its buildings. Monuments form the second layer. In 2021 the Springs War Memorial was restored, the MOTH Memorial in Geduld followed in 2023, and a war cemetery holds soldiers who died in the Second World War.

The Ken Gampu Theatre, once the Springs Civic Theatre, is the town's stage. Founded in 2023, the Mine and Military Museum shows artillery and air force aircraft such as the Impala and the Mirage.

What is the history of Springs?

A surveyor named it. When the farms of the Witwatersrand were measured, a leftover of 685 hectares between Geduld, De Rietfontein and Brakpan became state land, and the land surveyor James Brooks called it The Springs, probably for its many fountains. Its map was registered in Pretoria on 16 September 1884.

Coal came first. The first mining contract was signed in 1888, and in 1890 and 1891 the Randtram Line, the first railway of the Transvaal Republic, was built to carry East Rand coal to the gold mines. Gold followed.

It was found on Geduld in 1899, the town was proclaimed in April 1904 and given municipal status in 1912, and by the late 1930s eight mines surrounded it. Apartheid divided it. Under the Group Areas Act the black community of Payneville was forcibly removed in the 1950s to the new township of KwaThema.

The last mine, Daggafontein, closed at the end of the 1960s, and Springs moved from mining to manufacturing and engineering before it was folded into Ekurhuleni.

Where is Springs?

Springs stands on the East Rand, fifty kilometres east of Johannesburg and seventy-two kilometres southeast of Pretoria. It is the eastern gateway of Gauteng. Roads leave from here toward Mpumalanga and northern KwaZulu-Natal, and within Ekurhuleni the town keeps company with Brakpan, Benoni and Boksburg along the old mining belt of the Witwatersrand.