Most Bengalureans have seen and heard of Mayo Hall. You may even have been inside, especially if you are an advocate or have ever needed the services of one.
The building has its origins in an assassination. In 1872, Lord Mayo, Viceroy of India, was assassinated while on a visit to Port Blair. Soon after, a Mayo Memorial Committee was formed in Bengaluru which received donations from both Europeans and Indians to erect ‘a really handsome Public Hall’ to commemorate the late Viceroy.
In the 1870s, a dilapidated library and a decrepit theatre stood at the junction of Residency Road and M.G. Road, or South Parade as it was then called. These made way for the Mayo Memorial Hall. Although we now refer to the complex itself as Mayo Hall, the original Mayo Memorial Hall is the central building. Work began on it in 1876 and proceeded briskly, then sputtered, then stopped. The problem was money. The public had donated about ₹25,000 but it would cost almost double that to complete. Eventually, the Municipal Commission of the Civil and Military Station (as the Cantonment area was called) took over the project, footed the bills, and completed the construction in 1883. Since it was built as a public hall, the upper storey was to be ‘available to the public for all meetings of a public nature free of any charge.’
The hall has hosted several interesting gatherings including annual meetings of the Mythic Society and the United Planters Association of South India, and public lectures by the Buddhist philosopher P.L. Narasu, Annie Besant and sundry others. In 2011, the upper floor was converted into a museum on Kempe Gowda. This was shut down recently. The lower floor once served as the offices of the C and M municipality. Today, it houses the city’s Civil Courts. Occupying such a prominent location, Mayo Hall was once one of Bengaluru’s most important public buildings. It is still one of its most ornamental.
The building was designed by Richard H .Sankey, who also designed the Museum, Attara Kacheri (now High Court) and St. Andrew’s Church, to name but a few. For this building, Sankey chose the neo-Renaissance or Renaissance Revival style which was quite in vogue then.
One characteristic of Renaissance Revival is the lavish ornamentation of windows. Each of Mayo Hall’s first-floor windows is a delicious confection. Each has either a triangular or arched pediment, with mouldings supported on curved consoles or brackets lovingly decorated with acanthus leaves. Each window is framed by decorative pilasters, a small floral scroll on top, and a balustraded ledge below. Ground floor windows are differently treated with flat hoods, simple pilasters and unpretentious consoles. The division between the floors is accentuated by a belt course decorated with a Greek meander, a popular geometric motif in Western art.
The incredibly decorative cornice along the top of the building has scrolls and acanthus-leaved brackets supporting it.
The top is an uncommon combination of sloping and flat roofs. “Timber trusses support the false ceiling of embossed metal sheets that you can see on the first floor. Thick timber beams form the framework for the flat Madras terrace roof,” explains Pankaj Modi, conservation architect, INTACH. The building’s two main entrances are also striking. Each porch has three wooden arches, conceived with large circles along their lengths and shield-shaped designs in their spandrels.
(The author is Convenor, INTACH Bengaluru, and a researcher)
