Pop-up card: building in Windhoek

2023-10-11

Continuing from the previous issue, I created a pop-up card of a building in Namibia.
This card is the Windhoek railway station in the capital, Windhoek.

The history of the station building shows that the station building was built in 1912 during the German colonial period and then extended in 1929 by the South African Railways.
Reading this description, I imagined that the building on the right-hand side of the photo was the extension.

However, while searching for other photographs, I found a black-and-white photograph that I believe was taken before the station building was extended.
The photograph showed part A in the image below and part B, which was one story high; part B had a different shape to that of today.

[Reference]
* Windhoek railway station (from 'Atom site for DRISA’)

This means that in 1929, part B was renovated into a two-stories building and a further wing was built on the right-hand side.
Wikipedia’s description of the station building said that it had been extended to match the style of the existing building, but that did not refer to the far right wing, but to part B being made the same shape as A.

If I hadn’t noticed the old photo, I probably would have continued to think that only the far right wing was the extension.