Cape Dutch Architecture

Cape Dutch architecture is a colonial building style that emerged in the seventeenth century Dutch Cape Colony, centered on what is now South Africa's Western Cape, taking its name from the Dutch settlers who developed it and drawing on medieval building traditions from the Netherlands, Germany, France and Indonesia. Its houses are typically long, single or double story structures with whitewashed walls, thatched roofs, large wooden sash windows with external shutters, dormer windows and, in many though not all examples, a central gable recalling the gabled canal houses of Dutch cities. Well preserved historic examples survive across the Cape Winelands, in towns including Stellenbosch, Paarl, Swellendam, Franschhoek, Tulbagh and Graaff-Reinet, many on working wine estates. A deliberate Cape Dutch Revival began in 1893, when the businessman Cecil John Rhodes commissioned the architect Herbert Baker to redesign Groote Schuur in the style, a project that helped establish Cape Dutch forms as a self conscious national architecture following South Africa's union in 1910, and modern adaptations of the style have since appeared as far afield as Western Australia and New Zealand.