Johannesburg Park Station

Johannesburg Park Station is the central railway station of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the largest railway station on the African continent. A station on the site first opened in 1897, built as a steel and glass structure imported from the Netherlands and designed by Jacob Klinkhammer, with cast iron pillars, ornate ironwork and a glass domed roof over oak paneled interiors. A 1932 station designed by Gordon Leith and Partners with Gerhard Moerdyk and Watson added a concourse of Tuscan colonnades decorated with twenty eight painted panels by the artist Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef and hand painted tiled restaurants, though its facilities were built to enforce racial segregation, giving superior amenities to white passengers and inferior amenities to others. The current main structure, designed by the firm Kennedy, Furner, Irvine-Smith and Joubert with the civil engineer A.S. Joffe, was built during a reconstruction lasting from 1948 to 1965 and officially opened in 1965; the station now also connects to the underground Gautrain line and several other railway networks.