Sea Point#Local schools

Some of the first settlers in the area were the aristocratic Protestant Le Sueur family from Bayeux in Normandy. François Le Sueur arrived in 1739 as spiritual advisor to Cape Governor Hendrik Swellengrebel. The family's Cape estate, Winterslust, originally covered {{convert|81|ha}} on the slopes of Signal Hill. The estate was later named Fresnaye, and now forms part of the suburbs of Sea Point and Fresnaye.{{cite book |last=Green |first=L. |title=I Heard the Old Men Say |location=Cape Town |publisher=Howard Timmins |year=1964 |chapter=Sea Point was a Paradise |url=https://archive.org/stream/IHeardTheOldMenSay/IHeardTheOldMenSay_djvu.txt |via=Internet Archive }}

Sea Point got its name in 1767{{Cite web|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wallis,_Samuel_(DNB00)|title = Wallis, Samuel|volume = 59}} when one of the commanders serving under Captain Cook, Sam Wallis, encamped his men in the area to avoid a smallpox epidemic in Cape Town at the time. It grew as a residential suburb in the early 1800s, and in 1839 was merged into a single municipality with neighbouring Green Point. The 1875 census indicated that Sea Point and Green Point jointly had a population of 1,425. By 1904 it stood at 8,839.{{Cite news|url=http://www.sahistory.org.za/places/sea-point|title=Sea Point|last=sahoboss|date=2011-07-14|work=South African History Online|access-date=2018-06-17|language=en}}

With the 1862 opening of the Sea Point tramline, the area became Cape Town's first "commuter suburb", though the line linked initially to Camps Bay. At the turn of the century, the tramline was augmented by the Metropolitan and Suburban Railway Company, which added a line to the City Centre.{{cite web |url=http://thepropertymag.co.za/industry-news/605-sea-point-on-the-boardwalk-.html |title=Sea Point: On the Boardwalk |access-date=2013-03-18 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130421210243/http://thepropertymag.co.za/industry-news/605-sea-point-on-the-boardwalk-.html |archive-date=2013-04-21 }}

During the 1800s, Sea Point's development was dominated by the influence of its most famous resident, the liberal parliamentarian and MP for Cape Town, Saul Solomon. Solomon was both the founder of the Cape Argus and the most influential liberal in the country—constantly fighting racial inequality in the Cape. His Round Church (St John's) of 1878 reflected his syncretic approach to religion—housing four different religions in its walls, which were rounded to avoid "denominational corners". "Solomon's Temple", as it was humorously known by residents, stood on its triangular traffic island at the intersection of Main, Regent, and Kloof roads, a centre of the Sea Point community, until it was destroyed by the city council in the 1930s.{{cite book |last=Green |first=L. |title=I Heard the Old Men Say |location=Cape Town |publisher=Howard Timmins |year=1964 |chapter=Tower and Bells |oclc= }}

The suburb was later classed by the Apartheid regime as a whites-only area, but this rapidly changed in the late 1990s with a rapid growth of Sea Point's black and coloured communities.

Ships entering the harbour in Table Bay from the east coast of Africa have to round the coast at Sea Point and over the years many of them have been wrecked on the reefs just off-shore. In May 1954, during a great storm, the Basuto Coast (246 tonnes) ended up on the rocks within a few metres of the concrete wall of the promenade.{{Cite web |url=http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/2216/text/MARITIME.TXT |title=Archived copy |access-date=2009-10-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091020093458/http://geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/2216/text/MARITIME.TXT |archive-date=2009-10-20 |url-status=dead }} A fireman who came to the assistance of the crew was swept off the wall of the swimming pool adjacent to the promenade by waves and was never seen again. The vessel was soon thereafter salvaged for scrap. In July 1966 a large cargo ship, the S.A. Seafarer, was stranded on the rocks only a couple of hundred metres from the Three Anchor Bay beach. The stranding was the cause of one of Cape Town's earliest great environmental scares, owing to the cargo including drums of tetramethyl lead and tetraethyl lead, volatile and highly toxic compounds that in those days were added to motor fuels as an anti-knocking agent. The ship was gradually destroyed by the huge swells that habitually roll in from the south Atlantic. Salvage from the ship can still be found in local antique shops.

The area was historically classed as a "whites only" area only during the apartheid era under the terms of the Group Areas Act, a series of South African laws that restricted urban areas according to racial classifications.{{Cite web|url=https://www.iol.co.za/weekend-argus/pain-shock-of-forced-removals-11155528|title = Pain, shock of forced removals}} Some black and coloured residents continued to live in pockets of the suburb during this era.[https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-10-17-winning-vibes-sea-point-named-one-of-worlds-coolest-neighbourhoods/ Winning vibes – see in photos why Sea Point was just named one of world’s coolest neighbourhoods] Daily Maverick. 17 October 2022 The Twin Towers on Beach Road were built in the context of a "white housing crisis" in racially segregated Cape Town in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s the National Party initiated several planning interventions, including the suspension of the city's zoning rules with regards to building height for developers willing to build housing in white Group Areas.[https://visi.co.za/building-an-icon-disa-park/ Building an icon: Disi Park] Visi. 13 March 2023

In the early 1970s, the iconic 23-storey Ritz Hotel was built in Sea Point, with a revolving restaurant.[https://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/580/170943.html Sea Point welcomes the return of The Ritz] Biz Community. 5 December 2017 Prior to the development of the V&A Waterfront, Sea Point was known as a "tiny Manhattan by the sea", known for its restaurants and entertainment.{{cite book

| last = Lategan

| first = Herman

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| date = 2023

| title = Son of a Whore: A memoir

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| location = Cape Town

| publisher = Penguin Books

| page = 37

| isbn = 9781776391240

}}

In the mid to late 1990s, the area experienced a rise in crime as drug dealers and prostitutes moved into the area. However, due to the aggressive adoption of broken windows municipal management spearheaded by then area councillor Jean-Pierre Smith, the crime rate declined throughout most of the 2000s.{{cite video | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOPBAL7VTz4 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211213/wOPBAL7VTz4 |archive-date=2021-12-13 |url-status=live| title=Witness - Battle of Sea Point | publisher=Al Jazeera | date=January 15, 2009}}{{cbignore}} On the morning of 20 January 2003, nine men were killed in a brutal attack at the Sizzler's massage parlour in Sea Point.{{Cite news|url=http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/sizzlers-massacre-remains-a-mystery-1.386298#.VFDoXodB21A|title=Sizzlers massacre remains a mystery {{!}} IOL News|access-date=2018-06-17|language=en}}

File:Camps Bay, Cape Town and Sea Point Electric Tramways map - ca. 1906.jpg|Early map of Sea Point and its infrastructure, c. 1906

File:Cape 1st Class (4-4-0T) 1875 no. 4.jpg|Cape 1st Class (4-4-0T) 1875 no. 4

File:Round Church or Solomons Temple - Sea Point Cape Town - 1906.jpg|Round Church or Solomons Temple, 1906

File:Graaf's Pool, Sea Point, Cape Town.jpg|Graaff's Pool in 2020, shot on Kodak Ektar 100

Image:Sea Point Beach.jpg

Sea Point is a suburb of Cape Town and is situated on a narrow stretch of land between Cape Town's well known Lion's Head to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest. It is a high-density area where houses are built in close proximity to one another toward the surrounding mountainside. Apartment buildings are more common in the central area and toward the beachfront. An important communal space is the beachfront promenade, a paved walkway along the beachfront used for strolling, jogging, or socialising. Along the litoral of the Sea Point promenade, the coastline has varied characteristics. Some parts are rocky and difficult to access, while other parts have broad beaches. Sea Point beach adjoins an Olympic-sized seawater swimming pool, which has served generations of Capetonians since at least the early 1950s. Further toward the city is a beach known as Rocklands.

Adjoining Sea Point is Three Anchor Bay. The beaches along this stretch are in the main covered with mussel shells tossed up by the surf, unlike the beaches of Clifton and Camps Bay, which are sandy. The rocks off the beaches at Sea Point are in large part late Precambrian metamorphic rocks of the Malmesbury formation, formed by low-grade metamorphism of fine-grained sediments. The site is internationally famous in the history of geology. A plaque on the rocks commemorates Charles Darwin's observation of the rare geological interface, where granite, an igneous rock, has invaded, absorbed, and replaced the Malmesbury formation rocks. There are extensive beds of kelp offshore. Compared to the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula, the water is colder (11–16 °C).

Graaff's Pool, a beachfront tidal pool partially demolished in 2005, was the subject of a short film entitled "Behind the Wall", which contrasted the pool's origin story of Lady Marais, paralysed from the waist down from childbirth, whose husband built the pool for her as a private bathing area in the 1930s, and the Sea Point gay scene, which adopted the pool as a cruising ground between the 1960s and the 2000s.{{Citation|last=Ronan Steyn|title=Behind The Wall - In Zero Short Film Competition Winner 2012|date=2012-09-10|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8bVFRHGWd0 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211213/n8bVFRHGWd0 |archive-date=2021-12-13 |url-status=live|access-date=2018-06-17}}{{cbignore}}

The suburb is served by the MyCiTi bus rapid transit system. The 108 and 109 services take passengers to Hout Bay, V&A Waterfront and Adderley Street in downtown Cape Town.[https://www.myciti.org.za/docs/categories/3551/BRANDED_SYSTEM_MAP_DECEMBER_2022.pdf MyCiTi System Map] Accessed on 12.9.2023

File:Maraisroadshulmainbuilding.jpg

• The Marais Road Shul, formally known as the Green & Sea Point Hebrew Congregation, Orthodox Jewish congregation on Marais Road, in 1994 it had the largest Jewish congregation in the Southern Hemisphere[https://www.jta.org/archive/mandela-visits-cape-town-shul-and-reassures-jews-on-their-future Mandela Visits Cape Town Shul and Reassures Jews on Their Future] Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 10 May 1994
• Beit Midrash Morasha, an Orthodox Jewish congregation on Arthur's Road
• Ohr Somayach, Orthodox Jewish congregation on St John's Road and branch of Ohr Somayach, Jerusalem with a Baal teshuva tradition
• Sephardi Hebrew Congregation, Orthodox Jewish congregation on Regent's Road with a Sephardi tradition
• Chabad Centre of Cape Town, Orthodox Jewish congregation on St John's Road

Reform Jews living in the area are served by Temple Israel, an affiliate of the South African Union for Progressive Judaism, on Upper Portswood Road in neighbouring Green Point

• Common Ground Church Sea Point meets at the same venue as Sea Point Congregational Church, a Christian church at the corner of Main Road and Marais Road
• Joshua Generation Church Sea Point, an Evangelical church that meets at Sea Point High School at 5 Norfolk Road{{Cite web |title=Joshua Generation Sea Point |url=https://www.joshgen.co.za/venues/sea-point/ |website=Joshua Generation Churches}}
• Life Church (part of the Assemblies of God movement), an Evangelical church on Main Road{{Cite web |title=Life Church Sea Point |url=https://aoggroup.org.za/church/life-church-sea-point/ |website=Assemblies of God Group}}
• Sea Point Evangelical Congregational Church, an Evangelical church on Main Road
• Sea Point Methodist Church, a Methodist church on Main Road
• Church of the Holy Redeemer, an Anglican church on Kloof Road
• St James the Great Anglican Church, an Anglican church on St James Road
• New Apostolic Church Sea Point, a New Apostolic church on Marais Road
• Our Lady of Good Hope Catholic Church (formerly St Francis Church), a Catholic church on the corner of St Andrews Road and Beach Road

Schools in the area include Sea Point Primary School and Sea Point High School (formerly Sea Point Boys' High School) founded in 1884,{{cite web|url=http://www.spps.wcape.school.za|title=Apache2 Ubuntu Default Page: It works|website=www.spps.wcape.school.za}}{{cite journal|last1=Botha|first1=P|title=Sea Point High School – 130th Birthday: Established 21 April 1884|journal=The Good Times|page=16|date=March 2014|volume=2|issue=1|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/223058184/The-Good-Times-Schools-Newspaper-South-Africa-March-2014|access-date=12 October 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018121942/https://www.scribd.com/doc/223058184/The-Good-Times-Schools-Newspaper-South-Africa-March-2014|archive-date=18 October 2014|url-status=live}} and Herzlia Weizmann Primary. The French School of Cape Town opened on 14 October 2014"[http://www.orange.com/za/all-pages/French-School-opens-New-Campus-in-Sea-Point French School opens New Campus in Sea Point]" ([https://web.archive.org/web/20141029132551/http://www.orange.com/za/all-pages/French-School-opens-New-Campus-in-Sea-Point Archive]). Orange South Africa. Retrieved on 22 January 2015. after an R18m upgrade of the primary school of the old Tafelberg Remedial School's campus.McCain, Nicole. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20150926065859/http://www.peoplespost.co.za/articles/articledetails.aspx?id=120905 SEA POINT WELCOMING THE FRENCH]." People's Post. 13 February 2014. Retrieved on 22 January 2015. The primary school campus of the French school is in Sea Point."[http://www.ecolefrancaiseducap.co.za/en/contact-french-school-capetown CONTACT]." Cape Town French School. Retrieved on 22 January 2015. "Lycée Français du Cap 101, Hope Street - Gardens 8001 Cape Town South Africa" and "Ecole Française du Cap Corner Tramway and Kings road - Sea Point 8005 Cape Town South Africa"

• Life & Times of Michael K, a 1983 novel by J. M. Coetzee begins and ends in Sea Point.Coetzee, J.M. Life & Times of Michael K. Ravan Press 1983
• Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful, a 1983 novel by Alan Paton includes a description of Sea Point: "We are talking of fighting an election in Sea Point. It is probably one of the most favourable constituencies from our point of view, fairly affluent people with guilty consciences, a high percentage of Jewish voters, and a large number of retired business and professional men. There is probably a higher percentage of voters opposed to racial discrimination than anywhere else in South Africa."Paton, Alan. Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful. Penguin Books. 1983. pp. 103-104.
• Sea Point Days, a 2008 documentary film directed by François Verster{{cite web|title=Sea Point Days|url=http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500581861/|publisher=Sundance Channel|access-date=15 March 2012}}

File:1 Saul Solomon - Cape Politician CT.jpg, Cape Town politician who resided in Sea Point for most of his life during the late 1800s.]]

• John Whitmore, surfer, surfboard shaper, radio presenter, Springbok surfing team manager{{Cite web|url=https://johnwhitmorebook.wordpress.com/|title=The John Whitmore Book Project|website=The John Whitmore Book Project}}
• Anthony Sher, actor and writer.
• David Bloomberg, mayor of Cape Town
• Sally Little, professional golfer.
• Saul Solomon, liberal Cape politician.
• Colin Eglin, politician.
• Gerry Brand, Springboks rugby union footballer.
• David Rosen, fashion designer and artist.
• Bob Newson, cricketer.
• Karen Press, poet.
• Jacobus Arnoldus Graaff, businessman and politician, bequeathed Graaff's Pool to the people of Cape Town.
• Louise Smit writer of popular South African television shows, Wielie Walie and Haas Das.
• Arno Carstens singer-songwriter.{{Cite news|url=http://m.news24.com/channel24/Music/FeaturesInterviews/Carstens-Considers-Us-20091026|title=Carstens Considers Us|work=Channel|access-date=2018-06-17}}
• Darrel Bristow-Bovey, writer{{cite web|url=http://www.randomreads.co.za/blogs/in-praise-of-sea-point/151|title=In praise of Sea Point {{!}} Darrel Bristow-Bovey|website=www.randomreads.co.za|access-date=2018-06-17}}

The Green and Sea Point municipal council assumed a coat of arms in 1901.Western Cape Archives : Green and Sea Point Municipal Minutes (10 July 1901). The shield was divided vertically, one half depicting signal masts on Signal Hill, the other a golden lion's head, shoulders and forepaws; in the centre, near the top, was a small blue shield displaying three anchors. An imperial crown was placed above the shield.Murray. M. (1964). Under Lion's Head. The coat of arms has been incorporated into the emblem of the Metropolitan Golf Club{{cite web|url=http://www.metropolitangolfclub.co.za|title=Metropolitan - Golf Course|website=www.metropolitangolfclub.co.za}}

{{Reflist}}

{{commons category|Sea Point}}

• [https://www.flickr.com/photos/hilton-t/5419634735/ The Wreck of the S.A. Seafarer]
• [https://www.lancerealestate.co/sea-point-property-review/ Lance Real Estate Sea Point Property Review]

{{Cape Town|communities}}

Category:Jews and Judaism in Cape Town

Category:Orthodox Jewish communities

Category:Orthodox Judaism in South Africa

Category:Suburbs of Cape Town