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The bumpy road to Bengaluru getting its town hall

History of our neighbour
Last Updated 08 January 2022, 13:21 IST

"Assemble at Town Hall.” If you live in Bengaluru, chances are that you’ve heard this directive. Perhaps you attended an event at Town Hall. Perhaps you took part in some of the many citizen protests outside it. Or perhaps you were part of a group of bikers or other travellers who assembled there before heading out of the city on a Sunday morning.

Town halls were important public edifices, according to historian Robert Tittler. In the 17th century, town halls in England were built primarily to house local government offices, but their architecture also served to strengthen and symbolise their political authority. Later, they were also used as venues for public meetings and even performances, and gave the town a sense of common identity.

In India, from about the late 1800s, town halls were seen as essential public infrastructure. In the erstwhile Mysore kingdom, every town worth its name got itself a town hall.

Except Bengaluru.

It was only in the early 1900s that Bengaluru’s administrators commissioned a town hall. Unlike elsewhere, Bengaluru’s town hall was always meant to be a venue for cultural performances and public meetings. In 1917, Bombay-based architect E W Fritchley was asked to select a suitable site for a town hall and new municipal offices and also design them. Fritchley had an impressive portfolio of buildings he had designed around India and was already working in Mysore too.

Fritchley’s chosen site for the new buildings was near the Fort, where KPTCL’s transformers are now located. Town halls “should have noble and dignified frontages, suggestive of the propriety and importance of their towns,” declared Fritchley. According to him, the “Classic style admirably lent itself to the production of such effects.”

Exciting discussions, planning and revisions went on for more than three years. But then, financial constraints led to the plan being shelved.

The fact that Bengaluru finally did get a town hall is all thanks to Sir K P Puttanna Chetty. Chetty had been President of the Municipal Council and Chairperson of the City Improvement Committee when the town hall had first been proposed. He had seen the dream of the town hall flower, then wither and die.

In the 1930s, Chetty resurrected the proposal for a town hall by graciously donating a whopping Rs 75,000 towards its construction, which was estimated to cost Rs 1.5 lakh. The shortfall was met with funds from the Municipal Council and the Mysore government. The government rightly decided to name the structure after its generous benefactor.

Bengaluru in the 1930s was quite different from when Fritchely first proposed to build the town hall near the Fort. Several new buildings, roads and parks had come up as part of the 1927 Silver Jubilee celebrations of Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar. Accordingly, it was decided to build the hall at the head of Narasimharaja Boulevard, or N R Road. The site was strategically situated, being close to and easily accessible from both the cantonment and the Fort area.

The foundation stone for the Sir K P Puttanna Chetty Town Hall was laid in 1933 by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar. It was inaugurated two years later by Yuvaraja Kantirava Narasimharaja Wadiyar. In his speech, the Yuvaraja heaped praise on Puttanna Chetty, saying, “It is most fitting that this splendid building should be given to the city which he has loved so well...”

Government architect S H Lakshminarasappa designed the building. The hall was built with cloak rooms, retiring rooms, a dais and a platform. It could accommodate 750 people in the ground floor and an additional 250 in the gallery.

Like Fritchley, Lakshminarasappa too chose a classical style for the facade: the Tuscan columns and the triangular pediment at the entrance are typically European classical. The flight of steps leading to the entrance, the two smaller porticoes on the side, also with Tuscan columns, and a parapet at two levels complete the picture of quiet grandeur.

Eighty-seven years later, Bengaluru’s town hall retains its monumental dignity and gravitas, aloof from the snarling chaos of traffic in front of it.

(Meera Iyer is the author of ‘Discovering Bengaluru’ and the Convenor of INTACH Bengaluru Chapter.)

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(Published 08 January 2022, 13:02 IST)

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