Casa de Ferro

Prefabricated iron house, shipped from Belgium in the 1890s, that proved uninhabitable in the African heat

The Casa de Ferro (Iron House) is one of those buildings that survives on the strength of a good story. A small two-storey prefabricated structure of riveted iron plates, painted in a pink and white that matches nothing else on the street, it sits in a corner of the Tunduru Gardens just below the cathedral.

It is sometimes attributed — like the railway station — to Gustave Eiffel, and again the attribution is unverified. What is certain is that it was prefabricated in Belgium in the 1890s, shipped in pieces and reassembled on this corner. The building is not open for casual visits, but the exterior is worth a look on the way between the cathedral and the gardens.

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A story
The Iron House was meant to be the governor-general's residence. It turned out that an unventilated metal box in a tropical climate became unbearably hot by mid-morning, and the building was abandoned as a home almost immediately after delivery. For more than a century since it has been put to a series of less ambitious uses, currently the offices of the Department of Museums.