Restoring glory of Currency Building

Structure's trademark domes had been demolished

Problem was to find masons skilled in working with lime and mortar   

A walk around Dalhousie Square in the heart of Kolkata’s central business district will stand testimony to the epithet “City of Palaces”, the eastern metropolis has enjoyed for better part of three centuries. The colonial mega structures boasting of Gothic architecture, strewn around Dalhousie all the way to Esplanade, the city’s downtown, is witness to the grandeur of colonial India. Although many would like to forgo the past, for Kolkata the heritage is an integral part of its existence.

The Currency Building, once the office that manufactured and issued paper currency in British India, is one such monument. The building on one edge of Dalhousie Square would have also gone the way of the quaint Dalhousie Institute and the ornate Senate Building, falling to the vagaries of a city aspiring to meet the new age, if not for a group of alert Kolkatans. They raised a hue and cry over the demolition bid by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD).

The grand edifice gets its name from once being the Office of Issue & Exchange of Government Paper Currency. Although parts of it were demolished owing to a bureaucratic error in the late 1990s, the once-dilapidated structure is now on a road to recovery as the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is restoring it back to its former glory. Once a temple to finance and economics, the building is now set to be a museum and a space for art exhibitions and cultural shows.

Built in 1833, the Currency Building initially housed the Agra Bank but was later taken over by the imperial government to store and issue paper currency, said Dr P K Mishra, ASI’s regional director and the man in charge of the restoration project. He said that the building has served as one the oldest banks in India and even was home to the Reserve Bank of India till 1937. While the facade of the building has been returned to the way it looked in 19th century, Mishra said that the inside is still in the process of being restored.

The plot on which the Currency Building stands originally belonged to the Calcutta Auction Company, which held an office there till 1825, when Agra Bank took over. One of the oldest British mercantile banks, the company acquired the land in 1825 and constructed the building in 1833 with Venetian windows, ornate cast iron gates and railings. During the financial recession of 1886, a large part of the building was sold to the imperial government, which was looking for a suitable building to start the first Presidency office of the currency department.

As the Agra Bank, which survived the financial recession of 1886 but was liquidated for unknown reasons in 1888, shut shop, the currency department took over completely and added to the operations it started in 1886 as the first Currency Office of British India. The department functioned from the building till the 1960s before being shifted to the new RBI building closeby. “The building was built when Lord William Bentinck was Governor General. The three-storey building at the south-east corner of Dalhousie Square with intricate designs all around it are its main draw,” Mishra said. While he and others interested in Kolkata’s heritage lamented that even before it could be stopped, the CPWD had demolished the building’s trademark domes, much of the roof, supported with iron joists, could be saved.

While the floor was made of marble and Chunar sandstone, the ASI is trying to make the best of it with the use of available material resources. The CPWD had planned to demolish the building and build a high-rise in its place but fortunately it could be saved in time. The ASI, which took charge of the restoration project in 2003, declared the structure a heritage building and a “monument of national importance” in 1998, making it a protected place. Although, the ASI got possession of the building only in 2005, its plans to repair and reconstruct demolished parts of the building have been realised.

ASI officials pointed out that it was not an easy task. “Even before work could begin, all debris had to be removed and scaffolding had to be put up around the building to ensure it did not pose any hazard to passers-by and pedestrians, who walk along the busy footpath. While working on the interiors, the tough part was to repair and restore the inner walls with lime plaster, the stone floors and the dilapidated wooden staircases,” a senior official at the restoration site said.

Although the repairing work for the exterior is complete and the building has received a fresh coat of paint in its original white, the restoration of the interiors is taking up time. Talking about problems faced by them, an ASI official pointed out that the initial stumbling block was to hunt down masons skilled in working with lime and mortar, with the ASI having to pay much above market rate to employ such people. Another hard task was restoring the Central Hall that boasted of the three domes with skylights through which sunlight filtered in. These Italian style domes were the first to fall under CPWD’s hammer.

A Cotton, the chronicler of colonial Kolkata, described the building in great detail and considered it worthy of a visit. “The entrance has a very handsome gate… of a florid design in wrought iron. The central hall is of very grand proportions and is lighted by skylights surmounting three large domes. Here are the exchange counters for notes, gold, silver and small change. To the left as you walk up to the hall is a noble array of huge iron safes full of new note forms representing the value of many millions… a working reserve is kept in the Currency office, in a vault of massive masonry lined throughout roof and floor with iron; an iron door six inches in thickness closes this room which is further protected by a
second iron door and last of all by a massive iron grating,” he wrote in his account.

The Currency Building opened its doors in 2012 to Verdensteatret, a 14-member group from Oslo for an audio-visual performance based on the works of Swedish Nobel laureate poet Tomas Transtromer. This was the first time in years the building had opened its doors to the public. Samir Mukherjee, former head of museology department at the Calcutta University, said during a recent seminar on heritage conservation, also held at Currency Building, that the time has come for concerned citizens to take charge of such heritage structures. While many agree with him, given the building’s status as a “monument of national important” it might need a more concerned government to ensure the preservation of such structures.