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A welcome to heritage-consciousness

I was delighted recently to hear that the Minister for Local Administration M. K. Stalin was not only interested in getting Victoria Public Hall restored and put to gainful use but that he was also willing to seriously consider introducing a Heritage Act or some kind of regulations that will ensure heritage buildings, in Madras and elsewhere in the State, are restored and used. When he recently met two of the trustees of the Town Hall, as the VPH is also known, he told Suresh Krishna and A.V.M. Saravanan that they should find ways and means of getting the restoration underway as soon as possible. Krishna, when he was Sheriff of Madras, had restored one room of the Town Hall to demonstrate what could be done with the building and then began to push for its restoration. But after his year as Sheriff, he found the Town Hall embroiled with the Corporation of Madras in litigation and could not push the Trust's plans harder. Despite the Minister's interest in restoring VPH, he's not offered any solution to the issues under litigation. And some positive answers are necessary if the Trust is to take its plans further.

For long the Trust that was founded to raise and manage the Town Hall was chaired by the Sheriff of Madras, and included representatives from the Corporation and the Maharajah of Vizianagaram's family as well as leading citizens of the city. It was Sir Ananda Gajapati of Vizianagaram who made it possible for the Town Hall to be built after a drive for funds from the public by Sir A. T. Arundel, President of the Corporation, failed in the 1880s to raise the money required. The Maharajah's munificence and the Corporation's cooperation in providing on a 99-year lease 3 1/2 acres (63 grounds approximately) in People's Park enabled the finest hall in Madras north of Mount Road at the time to be opened by Governor Lord Connemara in 1887. The land was leased for 8 annas (50 paise) a ground. This undoubtedly is one of the issues in dispute.

Robert Chisholm was the architect who designed the building in Indo-Saracenic style but did so during his `Travancore period'. After his success in designing and supervising the building of the Napier Museum in Trivandrum, Chisholm began introducing Travancorean features in many of his buildings, particularly the sloping Kerala-style roofs he `capped' his towers with. Namberumal Chetty, that great building contractor of late 19th Century Madras, executed Chisholm's plans.

The Town Hall was conceived by Arundel as an "affirmation of the loyalty of the citizens of Madras to the Crown on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign". It was also meant for "purposes conducing to the moral, social and intellectual welfare or rational recreation of the public of Madras."

Once, the hall seated 600 in the upper hall, built over smaller rooms on the ground floor, and 200 in the balcony.

Rents in the early years ranged from Rs.3-8-0 to Rs.40 a night depending on room and usage. The Hall was used for small meetings held in its ground floor rooms, public lectures - and virtually every orator in Madras in the late 19th and early 20th Century spoke here - theatrical performances in English and Tamil - this was the Suguna Vilasa Sabha's home stage which Pammal Sambandam Mudaliar strode in great style - pantomimes and other Christmas entertainments, grand balls, and teas and receptions.

The Suguna Vilasa Sabha, until it moved out in 1939, and its successor, the Chennapuri Andhra Mahasabha, till it moved out in 1966, did much to keep the Town Hall alive in its waning years.

But from the late 1960s, the Hall went to seed and is, today, positively decrepit. In fact, in the 1980s, a Madras journal described it as having the atmosphere of "a sleazy strip joint". It has gone downhill even further since then and cries out for restoration not only as a heritage building but as one of the city's major performance spaces. I hope the interest Minister Stalin has shown in this building - and in heritage in general - will translate into positive action in the next few months.

S. MUTHIAH

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