Bengaluru of yore captured in photo frames

Blast from the past

Wondered how the heritage buildings in the City looked like three decades ago?
“Bengaluru - Then And Now,” an exhibition being held at the Cubbon Park from Sunday, is the right place to look for. One can have a dekko of the heritage buildings, both government and residential, then and now.

Being organised by the Bengaluru chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach), the exhibition provides a snapshot of the City’s changing heritage-scape over the last 30 years.

More than 25 “Then and Now” pictures of the heritage buildings located on the Pottery Road, Cunningham Road, at Bull Temple, Malleswaram, and from the other core areas are on display.

While a few buildings remain in place, others have given way to commercial complexes, offices and boutiques.

“In 1985, Intach prepared a list of iconic heritage buildings of Bengaluru, which was submitted to the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission. Thirty years later, volunteers from Intach revisited all the buildings in the list and noted how many of them still exist. The exhibition is based on the 1985-list of buildings and its recent update. It took four months to curate the pictures, click the buildings and organise the event,” said Co-convenor, Intach, Meera Iyer.

According to Intach’s list of iconic heritage buildings, there were about 823 buildings in 1985 Out of which, only about 354 remain, the Intach members said.

“While the government-owned buildings fared best with 83 per cent of them still intact, only 25 per cent of the residential heritage buildings listed in 1985, are existing,” they added.

Iyer said that the survey in 1985 was undertaken by architect K N Iyengar and ace photographer Perumal Venkatesan, who captured the photographs of the buildings presently. The exhibition will go on till January 10 and is being held inside the Cubbon Park premises, between the museum and the bandstand.