Wale Street and Stoeps

The stone benches by the doors here stand directly above the pavement because these houses have no front gardens. Narrow plots run deep into the slope, the houses share walls with their neighbors, and they stretch out in long stepped rows. On the raised stoep, people could pause at the threshold, talk with neighbors, or watch over children without leaving the boundary of home. In this way, the steep neighborhood became a shared space for craftspeople, traders, and people who gained freedom after slavery.

In seventeen sixty, Jan de Waal, a former quartermaster of the Dutch East India Company and overseer of Cape Town's main Reformed church, bought land at the foot of Signal Hill. The city ended lower down then, while here there were still vegetable gardens and scattered buildings. De Waal invested with people in mind who needed inexpensive housing near the city's workshops, shops, and port.

From seventeen sixty-three to seventeen sixty-eight, he built small single-story houses to rent out. De Waal himself was a wealthy landowner: on the same land stood a large family house designed for his seventeen children, and the family made wine. Rows of tightly packed rental houses brought in another income. De Waal called the development Waalendorp—the settlement of Waal. In seventeen sixty-eight, he died; his heirs divided the property into six parts, and other owners continued the work he had begun.

As Cape Town grew, craftspeople, traders, and people freed from slavery, of varied origins, settled here. After the final emancipation of enslaved people in eighteen thirty-eight, demand for inexpensive houses near the city grew even stronger. New owners and developers repeated the familiar pattern: a narrow plot, a deep house, a shared wall with the neighbor, and an entrance directly from the street. This is how long stepped rows appeared on the slope.

There was a small linguistic change to the street name. The original Waal Street led to Waalendorp. Under the British, its spelling became Wale Street. The modern sign no longer shows de Waal's full surname, but the street still runs through the land he turned into a rental neighborhood.

Another part of this arrangement remains in front of the doors: the stoeps. This local word means a narrow raised porch between the house and the pavement. On the steep slope, its height changes with the street's incline. Low side walls end in stone seats. Such a house has no front garden: residents step straight from the room onto the stoep, and from the stoep onto the street.

These seats made it possible to talk with neighbors, meet friends, and keep an eye on children without going far from the door. In June two thousand twenty-five, Bo-Kaap residents gathered on the stoep of the Bo-Kaap Museum on Wale Street and shared family memories there for an oral-history project. The organizers chose the stoep specifically: in these houses, a story between neighbors always began on the stone bench between room and pavement.