From Delamere to Kenyatta

01One street, three names, one century

Kenyatta Avenue is the spine of Nairobi's Central Business District, and it has carried three names in roughly a century of use. The grid laid out beside the railway in 1899 numbered its streets, and this one ran as Sixth Avenue. It later took the name Delamere Avenue, after the settler figure whose name sat on much of the colonial town. In 1963, the year of independence, it was renamed for Jomo Kenyatta. The three names are a short lesson in who the street was for at each stage, and the width the surveyors gave it has outlasted all three labels.

Why give one street a page? Because a name change is the cheapest kind of history and the easiest to misread. The avenue did not become a different street in 1963. The same pavements, the same junctions and the same generous width stayed exactly where they were, and what changed was the lettering on the signs and the composition of the people walking under them. Sixth Avenue served a railway camp and a settler town. Delamere Avenue served an administrative and commercial capital. Kenyatta Avenue serves a republic's financial centre. Follow the names and you follow that shift without leaving the kerb.

The street itself is the constant. It runs west to east from the Uhuru Highway roundabout to the Moi Avenue junction, six lanes with a planted median and pavements deep enough to walk several abreast. It sits on the grid origin at Kenyatta Avenue at Moi Avenue. The colonial surveyors allowed a turning circle wide enough for a span of oxen, which is the single reason the financial address of Kenya today has the roomiest pavements in the centre. Nothing about the naming story makes sense without that width underneath it.

This page stays on the street and not on the country. There is a large history of Kenya, and it is not this page's subject. The subject here is one avenue, what it was called, what each name was for, and how the street reads now. The country's story touches the avenue at a few points, at independence and at the bombing in 1998, and those are noted for what they did to the street. Everything else belongs to other pages. The avenue is enough for one piece, and it is more interesting than a national summary.

02What the avenue carries now

The avenue today is the financial address of Kenya. Almost every bank in the country keeps a head office within sight of it, and several of the banking halls from the 1950s and 1960s are still in use with their original interiors. The width the surveyors left allows the traffic, the median planting and the deep pavements to coexist without the crush that marks the streets further east. There are signalled crossings at every major junction, and the hawker pressure common one block north is largely absent here. It is the tidiest stretch of the CBD.

The street does not sit alone. It holds a row of names that explain how the centre works, and they are worth knowing before walking. Kimathi Street is one block north and parallel, carrying the old Stanley corner, the tailors and the coffee houses, and it is the most pleasant short walk in the district. Standard Street and Mama Ngina Street are short connectors that take the lunch trade between the bank towers. Wabera Street runs south towards City Hall past the Nairobi Gallery, quiet and institutional, and is the fastest way down to City Square on foot.

What the avenue carries has changed twice in living memory. The first shift moved insurance and banking into the blocks the settler traders had occupied, which is why those older banking halls are the oldest continuously used interiors in the city. The second shift is still running: since the 2000s the head offices have drifted west to the ridge above the CBD, and the ground floors they left have filled with phone shops, pharmacies and tailors. The avenue is grander than what now trades on it.

That gap is the honest character of the street. It is a formal address with a workaday ground floor, and both are visible from the same pavement. For a visitor the avenue is still the easiest line in the city to hold on to, because the whole grid arranges itself around it: City Square and the convention centre to the south, the market streets one block north, the busiest pavements in Kenya at the east end, and Uhuru Park to the west. Keep the avenue as the orientation line and the rest of the centre falls into place.

03What this page cannot settle

The three names are a matter of record. What the avenue feels like, how long a walk along it takes at your own pace, and when any particular door opens are not. Opening hours, ticketing and market days are set by each operator and move with the season and the management. This page is compiled from published information and the site's own checks rather than from a visit, and opening arrangements and anything that moves week to week are not printed here. Treat the history as fixed and the practical details as variable.

A name change also cannot tell you what the street was like under the previous name. Nobody now living can describe Sixth Avenue as a resident of the railway camp saw it, and the archival record is thinner than the confident guidebook sentence suggests. The temptation is to fill the gap with atmosphere, and that is exactly what this page declines to do. What can be said with confidence is what was built and when, which institutions occupied which blocks, and when the renaming took place.

Several practical things need checking on the day rather than trusting any page. Bank and bureau opening hours are set by each operator and move, so check the branch you intend to use on the day rather than trusting any page, including this one. The galleries and memorial sites on and off the avenue set their own ticketing and open days, so confirm before walking, because a closed door here means a wasted crossing. Walk the avenue on a weekday, when the bank halls, coffee houses and lunch trade are open; Sunday the offices are shut and the pavements are empty of purpose. Keep to the south side for the jacaranda photographs and the north pavement for afternoon shade, but cross only at the signalled junctions, never mid-block.

The renaming in the year of independence is a matter of record, but the avenue's three names do not tell you what a visit feels like, how long the walk takes at your pace, or when any door opens. Opening hours, ticketing and market days are set by each operator and move with the season and the management. Treat the history here as fixed and the practical details as variable, and check with the building or the operator on the day. What a name cannot fix includes the whole evening question, since the avenue empties with the offices. Eat in the hotel or take a car west, and take a car back.

• Bank and bureau opening hours are set by each operator and move, so check the branch you intend to use on the day rather than trusting any page, including this one.
• The galleries and memorial sites on and off the avenue set their own ticketing and open days; confirm before walking, because a closed door here means a wasted crossing.
• Walk the avenue on a weekday, when the bank halls, coffee houses and lunch trade are open; Sunday the offices are shut and the pavements are empty of purpose.
• Keep to the south side for the jacaranda photographs and the north pavement for afternoon shade, but cross only at the signalled junctions, never mid-block.

04How to use the avenue

Use the avenue as the line you walk first. It is the easiest orientation in the centre, and the three names give the walk a shape. Start at the western end, where the expressway and the highway drop you, and move east towards the Moi Avenue junction. The width of the pavements makes the walk comfortable in a way the streets around it are not tolerant of, and the crossings are signalled at every major junction. If only one walk in the CBD happens, this is the one to take, banked by banks.

Read the buildings rather than the signs. The name on the avenue changed in 1963, and what sits on it has changed twice since, first into banking and insurance, then partly out again to the ridge above the city. The banking halls from the middle of the last century still hold their original interiors, and looking up at the ceilings while changing money is the cheapest piece of architectural history on the street. The ground floors tell the other half: phone shops, pharmacies and tailors where the head offices used to be.

Plan the walk on a weekday. Sunday the offices are shut and the pavements are empty of purpose, and the avenue reads as a set rather than a street. The lunch trade is the other reason to come on a working day: Standard Street and Mama Ngina Street fill from about half past twelve with the office crowd, and the cafes and canteens along them turn over fast. That is the easiest hot lunch in the centre to walk into. The roasteries around Kimathi Street will brew you the grade Kenya used to ship rather than drink.

Let the names do their work and stop there. Sixth Avenue, Delamere Avenue and Kenyatta Avenue describe the same strip of ground across a century, and the most interesting thing about it is the continuity rather than the change. Walk it once with the width in mind and the naming story becomes visible in the pavement. Then use it as the spine for everything else: north to the market streets, south to City Square, west to the park. The avenue is the one line in the centre that repays a second pass, and the second pass is usually better.

Where this page comes from

Desk research, not fieldwork. Nobody writing this stood on the corner with a stopwatch, and a page that implied otherwise would be the least trustworthy thing on the site. The specifics above came from here:

• Construction dates and locations: the public building record.
• CBD office relocation: published commercial property research on the ridge and Westlands.
• Banking hall interiors: the buildings are in continuous use; no interior detail here is claimed beyond what is visible from the public hall.

Opening hours, ticketing and market days change. No hotel or operator pays to appear here.