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Kinshasa 2018 – Former US Consulate Identified
In a post a few years back (Feb. 2, 2012), I reported my surprise at finding a photo of the first US Consulate in Leopoldville, located in a well-known landmark building on Place Leopold (aka Place...
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Leopoldville 1928 - The Royals Visit
Ninety years ago, at the end of June 1928, King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium visited Leopoldville. The city was selected to replace Boma as the capital of the Belgian Congo in 1923, but the...
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Leopoldville 1959 – Martyrs for Independence
On December 30, 1958, leaders of the Kalamu Section of ABAKO (Alliance des Bakongo, an early political party) wrote to the Premier Bourgmestre (Mayor) of the City of Leopoldville advising of their...
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Kinshasa 2019 - Where does a New President lay his Head?
On January 24, 2019, Felix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo was sworn in as fifth President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The grand event, an unprecedented peaceful transfer of power, was the...
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Kinshasa 2019 – Overpasses on Blvd 30 Juin
In January 2011, I wrote a piece about Boulevard du 30 Juin when the expansion to 8 lanes of the original four was nearing completion (Jan. 23, 2011). During the last three years I’ve lived here, this...
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Leopoldville 1958 – Le Plein Vent restaurant
Colonial Leopoldville was a creation by and for Europeans. Notwithstanding the presence of numerous Congolese settlements on the Congo River at the time of Stanley’s arrival in 1881 (May 22, 2017),...
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Leopoldville 1923 – Place de la Poste
On July 21, 1923, the elite of Kinshasa, European and African, gathered to inaugurate a bust of King Albert 1er at the Place de la Poste. Only 3 weeks earlier, a Royal Decree established...
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Leopoldville 1962 - "Le Twist a Leo" by Manu Dibango
Manu Dibango, legendary Cameroonian saxophonist, known for his fusion of rumba, jazz, funk and traditional music, died in Paris on March 24, 2020 of Covid-19. Before he rose to fame on the African and...
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Leopoldville 1918 – “La Grippe Espagnole”
I recently heard a piece on U.S. National Public Radio about Brian Melican's article in the New Statesman entitled, “A tale of three cities: the places transformed by pandemics across history”...
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Leopoldville 1960 – Patrice Lumumba’s Residence
This photograph, taken of a villa on Boulevard Albert 1er across from the Leopoldville golf course in May 1948, was Patrice Lumumba’s residence in 1960 when he became Prime Minister of the independent...
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Leopoldville 1926 – Hotel Sica – The Mystery of the Memling
In 2011, I posted a piece about the Hotel Memling, its origins as the Hotel SICA and after 1937, a property of Belgian Airlines Sabena (Mar. 29, 2011). Recently, a colleague shared an early photo of...
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Kinshasa 2021 - Sims Chapel Replica in Kwilu Province
Five years ago, I wrote about Sims Chapel in Kinshasa (May 4, 2016). Built in 1891 by Dr. Aaron Sims of the American Baptist Missionary Union, it is the oldest permanent building in the city and still...
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Leopoldville 1929 – Funa Club Founded
I learned to swim at the Mampeza Pool in Leopoldville Ouest, as Commune de Ngaliema was known in the mid-1950s. The pool was built in the valley of the Mampeza river opposite Camp Reisdorf (now Camp...
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Leopoldville 1942 – Guilherme Marques helps launch Academie des Beaux-Arts
A few years ago, I posted a piece about Guilherme d’Oliveira Marques, known as the “Painter of the Congo” (May 17, 2017). It was prompted by a serendipitous find of an old photo of his house. Today, in...
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Leopoldville 1928 - Chanic founded on Ngaliema Bay
The Chanic shipyards by Guilherme Marques d'Oliveira (Ph: katembo.be)Among my earliest memories of Kinshasa are the sounds emanating from the Chanic shipyards; the clanging of steel, the staccato of...
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Leopoldville 1957 –Fish at the Zoo
One day in March 1957, my dad showed me an advertisement from the Zoo (Feb. 6, 2011) in the “Courrier d’Afrique” newspaper in Leopoldville announcing it had completed construction of some new animal...
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Elisabethville 1910 – The Cape to Cairo railroad arrives
The photos below don’t have much to do with Kinshasa, but I’ve had them for a while and think they are too interesting not to share. They show the arrival of the railway from South Africa at the Etoile...
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Leopoldville 1942 – US Army establishes Camp Presnell
In a previous post (May 23, 2011), I described the arrival of the U.S. Army in Leopoldville at the end of August 1942, with an assignment to upgrade Ndolo airport to handle heavy bombers in transit to...
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Leopoldville 1943 - Two franc elephant
In 1942, with the economy picking up and more Congolese participating in the cash economy, the Belgian Government in Exile in London placed an order with the Philadelphia Mint for 25 million 2 franc...
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Leopoldville 1944 - Gunther Baby Grand for Sale
If you’ve followed this blog for a while you may have concluded that one of my favorite buildings in Kinshasa is the former Sedec Motors showroom at the corner of Avenues Aviateurs and Isiro opposite...
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Leopoldville 1945 - President Roosevelt's Memorial Service
Just before midnight on Thursday April 12, 1945, US Consul General Buell received a visit from George Housiaux, the Director of Radio Congo Belge, who informed him that President Roosevelt had died in...
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Leopoldville 1949 – Speakerine Pauline Lisanga
This International Women’s Day we remember Congolese women who pushed the boundaries of traditional roles in the years before Independence in 1960. At twenty-three, Pauline Lisanga in 1949 became the...
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Leopoldville 1943 – Leisure on the River at Kinsuka
Kinsuka is a Quartier in Ngaliema Commune, situated on the rapids four kilometers downstream from the Chanic shipyards. Tradition holds that Kinsuka means, “end of town”, the furthest extension of...
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Leopoldville 1945 – Plan de la Ville de Léopoldville
Interpreting Kinshasa “then and now” depends on good archival material. Informed analysis also requires a bit of conjecture. Newspapers and telephone or postal directories are useful, but detailed maps...
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Kinshasa 2025 – International Women’s Day
Kinshasa could not function without the small vendors, mostly women and girls, who are the face of daily markets throughout the city. Notwithstanding the spread of western-style supermarkets from Gombe...
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