Feather Market Centre

A historic public building on Baakens Street in Gqeberha, near the harbour and the Baakens River, built as an auction and storage hall for the ostrich-feather trade on a site used as a wool market from 1863. Its roof was designed by the British engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry, made in England and shipped out in 1882; William Henry Miles then designed a building of local stone with Coega stone facings to fit it, and the Feathermarket Hall opened on 10 December 1885. A frontage and extension along Baakens Street by the municipal engineer Arthur Shaw Butterworth followed in 1908, and a verandah in 1917. The hall holds a Norman and Beard organ bought after the 1892 Kimberley Exhibition and first played on 15 June 1893. It was declared a national monument in 1980 and reopened after refurbishment in 1993 as the Feather Market Centre, with conference facilities and a concert hall.