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Leopoldville 1950s -- Hotel des Allies
Hotels des Allies on Ave. CambierAnother small hotel in Leopoldville in the 1950s (See Mar. 30, 2011) was the Hotel des Alliés, located a block south of the Memling (See Mar. 29, 2011)at the...
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Leopoldville 1930 – Governor General Tilkens moves to Kalina
On July 1, 1923, the beginning of the Belgian fiscal year, Leopoldville was decreed the capital of the colony. The town was to replace the current capital at Boma as soon as the requisite...
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Leopoldville 1929 – US Consulate Opens on Place Leopold
When I was preparing the piece on the US Consulate (See Jan. 29, 2011), I sought unsuccessfully to establish where it was located when the office first opened in 1929. The Consulate closed the...
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Leopoldville 1930s – Leisure in a time of Depression
One of the challenges in writing an illustrated history of Kinshasa’s architectural heritage of the 1930s is that not much was built during the Depression. In addition, from the standpoint of this...
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Léopoldville 1924 – Monument des Aviateurs
On July 1st, 1924, the entire European community of Kinshasa and Léopoldville turned out at the end of Ave. Militaire (See Mar. 12, 2011) near the port to inaugurate a monument commemorating three...
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Leopoldville 1920s – Yankee Traders on the Congo
When I lived in Kinshasa in the mid-2000s, this building at the corner of Ave. Ebeya (Cambier) and Equateur (Beernaert) was intriguing. It was clearly a colonial structure of some significance, but...
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Leopoldville 1934 – The Salvation Army Marches In
In September 1934, Adjutant Henri Becquet of the Belgian Salvation Army and his wife Paula arrived in Leopoldville to establish the missionary work of this Protestant church in the capital. The...
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Leopoldville 1913 - SYNKIN Begins Operations
As Kinshasa began to supplant Leopoldville as the economic center of the future capital, local authorities developed plans to relocate the port upstream to Kinshasa (See Mar. 13, 2011). A new company,...
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Kinshasa 2012 – Plus ça change…
I had an opportunity to return to Kinshasa last week and see how things have evolved since I attended the TASOK Reunion in June 2011 (July 3, 2011). There is a bit of “plus ça change, plus c'est la...
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Leopoldville 1902 – First Hospital for Congolese
The first hospital for African - Hopital de la RiveThe first hospital for Congolese opened in Leopoldville in 1902, built by Cdt. Mahieu along a strip of land downstream from the port between Mount...
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Leopoldville 1925 – First Flight from Belgium
At 11:00 on the morning of April 3, 1925, a three-motor biplane droned into the skies over Kinshasa. The cream of colonial society was waiting and a band struck up strains of the Belgian national...
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Kinshasa 1989 – The Mad Baron’s Castle Demolished
Things learned while looking for other things… While researching Ndolo Airport, I came across a reminiscence by Denis Le Jeune in “Memoires du Congo” (http//www.memoiresducongo.org) about the house...
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Léopoldville 1959 – A Tale of Two Airports
In February 1959, the new International Airport at Ndjili opened to much fanfare. Replacing the original Ndolo airport (See Apr. 27, 2013), the new facility was celebrated as one of 14 in the world...
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Leopoldville 1924 – The Red Cross Returns
In an earlier post (See Nov. 26, 2012), I described how King Leopold II engaged the Association Congolaise et Africaine de la Croix Rouge to provide medical services in Leopoldville. This led to the...
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Léopoldville 1928 – First Public Transport on the Streets
When I was preparing the post on public transportation in Kinshasa (See. October 24, 2011), I used a 100 Fr. share document to illustrate the Société Industries et Transports Automobiles au Congo...
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Leopoldville 1924 – Photo Zagourski Opens Shop
Many of the images used in this blog originated as post cards. These were a popular means for colonials to share their African experience with friends and family back home. The images can largely be...
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Kinshasa 1914 – World War I comes to Congo
On the morning of August 3, 1914, the German community of Kinshasa, as well as several hundred specially-recruited able-bodied Congolese, left port for the Sangha River, the main artery serving eastern...
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Leopoldville 1917 – The Grémio Portugalia Established
In the 2000s, this building on Ave. de l’Equateur across from the Patisserie Nouvelle was occupied by the French petroleum company ELF. When I returned to Kinshasa in 2011 for the TASOK Reunion, it...
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Leopoldville 1930 – Belgian Centenary Observed
I came across this photo today and was intrigued to learn more about the Grémio Portugalia so soon after my recent post on the subject (See Nov. 1, 2014). The setting is similar to an image I found a...
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Leopoldville 1924 - Party at the Café Central
In an earlier post on Kinshasa’s lost architectural heritage in March 2011, I shared a photo of the Café Central (See Mar. 24, 2011), suggesting it could have been on Ave. Stanley (now Ave. du...
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