Hendrik Siemerink, an architect born in Holland, established the firm of Siemerink, Brinkman and van Rooyen in Port Elizabeth. In August 1920 he bought a plot in Park Drive. His daughter, Getruida, (later Brinkman) was the first woman in South Africa to obtain a Bachelor of Architecture Degree (Wits). She designed the Art Deco house, “Ridgewood”” at 30 Park Drive in 1936 for H.F.A Stockelbach, manager of the Ford Motor Company. It later belonged to Abe Karstaedt, Mayor of Port Elizabeth, and was subsequently bought in the mid-1990s by Gutsche Family Investments, becoming the Ron Belling Art Gallery (now re-named the GFI Art Gallery). Arguably the finest house in the International Style in the city, it has been saved and maintained, but with later extensions.
