Rissik Street is one of the main routes leading from south to north through the Johannesburg CBD and is a roadway used by numerous commuters on a daily basis.
The street was named after Johann Rissik who arrived in Pretoria from Holland in 1876, but moved to the town that would later be known as the City of Gold in 1886 during the gold rush.
Rissik and Christiaan Johannes Joubert were sent to the area to investigate it and choose a site on which a town could be built. The area was then named Johannesburg, after the two men who initiated development in the area.
Since the development of the town and the roads that flow through it, there have been a number of historically significant buildings which have stood on Rissik Street.
The Rissik Street Post Office was built in 1897 and it was, at the time, the tallest building in Johannesburg. It is, therefore, one of Johannesburg’s oldest buildings and it started out as a one-storey building, two storeys shy of its current three-storey glory.
Glory is, however, not the word many would use to describe the building today as it is run down and dilapidated with a number of windows boarded up since the Post Office was evicted in 1996.
SARS is located on Rissik Street and so is the City Hall, which was constructed late in 1914.
The Gauteng Provincial Legislature currently occupies the City Hall building, and between the time it was constructed up to now it saw much political activity.
The office of National Union of Mineworkers (Num) is located in the southern half of Rissik Street and is the largest trade union affiliated with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
