George Samuel Burt Andrews
George Samuel Burt Andrews (1868-1938)
1938 Obituary [1]
GEORGE SAMUEL BURT ANDREWS, who helped to design Johannesburg, was for thirty-four years in the municipal service of that city, and held the position of town engineer from 1901 until his retirement in 1927.
He was born at Greenwich in 1868 and served a pupilage from 1881 to 1884 under his father, Mr. G. R. Andrews, who was engineer to the Bournemouth Improvement Commissioners. From 1886 to 1890 he was engineer assistant to Hornsey Local Board; in the latter year he went to Johannesburg, where his father had been appointed engineer and manager of the waterworks company. After about two years in private practice as an engineer, he was appointed assistant town engineer of Johannesburg in 1893, having just won an open competition for the layout of Joubert Park. During the South African War he went to Natal, and prepared a scheme for the water supply of Pietermaritzburg; in 1900 he joined the Imperial Light Horse and was present at the relief of Mafeking. Subsequently he returned to Johannesburg, under British local government administration.
He was appointed acting town engineer in 1901 and the appointment was confirmed in 1904. He was responsible for many of the fundamental schemes in the planning of the city and promoted many important municipal undertakings, in particular the town water supply, the surface water drainage scheme, the tramway system with its generating station, the town drainage and sewage pumping plants, and the refuse destructors. Mr. Andrews was consulting engineer to the city council from 1927 to 1929. His death occurred at Houghton on 3rd November 1937.
He was elected a Member of the Institution in 1908, and was also a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a past-president of the South African Association of Engineers and of the South African Society of Civil Engineers.