A plea for Pachaiyappa’s Hall in Chennai

Now that Victoria Public Hall is restored and the other cause célèbre, namely the Bharat Insurance Building has had restoration begun on it, my mind goes over the other great buildings awaiting a better future. The GPO, shoddily restored after a completely avoidable fire is at least functional, but not the Bank of Madras (State Bank of India) Building on Rajaji Salai. I wonder what awaits it. Gokhale Hall on Armenian Street, I do know, is soon to undergo restoration. But it is Pachaiyappa’s Hall on NSC Bose Road that I am most concerned about. With the trust that owns it mostly in the news for legal squabbles, precious little seems to be done about this historic edifice.

In terms of great public venues in the city, Pachaiyappa’s Hall was the first, at least as far as Indians were concerned. It was the first project of the eponymous trust, formed to administer the estate of Pachaiyappa Mudaliar, after several decades of litigation. The trust came into existence in 1832, but legal tangles delayed matters even further and the first meeting took place only in 1841. Out of this was born the Patcheappah Central Institution, in January 1842, which became a feeder to the Madras High School, established a year earlier. The latter would become the Presidency College.

The Patcheappah Central Institution functioned from rented premises, which seems to be the same site where the Hall is now. Records have it that this was owned by the Hindu Literary Society. In 1844, the trustees applied for a site near the General Hospital to build a new school premises and when this was rejected, they purchased the land on which they had functioned until then. Captain Ludlow, junior military engineer, was entrusted with the design. The requirement was a structure that could house a school and a hall. Ludlow, in response, came up with a neo-classical design, said to be based on the temple of Theseus in Athens. The foundation stone was laid by George Norton, Advocate General, Madras, on October 2, 1846. He was one of the prime movers behind interpreting Pachaiyappa’s will and making sure its surplus was earmarked for education.

Strong foundation

In her work Imperial Conversations, Indo-Britons and the Architecture of South India (Yoda Press, 2007), Shanti Jayewardene Pillai gives us details of how Pachaiyappa’s Hall was built. Trenches were dug deep and allowed to dry and on this, a bed of river sand was spread, which was then beaten into a rock-like consistency of three feet. Then came the foundation of bricks, six feet deep, “each course being rammed and levelled to prelude cracks.” The scaffolding was erected independent of the structure being built within it, so that no holes needed to be made to support it. The author concluded that such precision accounts for why Pachaiyappa’s Hall still stands, despite decades of neglect.

Completed on March 20, 1850, and declared open that day by Governor Sir Henry Pottinger, the building is in two distinct parts – the auditorium, which overlooks the road from the first floor, and the school, which is behind it, spread across two sets of rooms each standing around a central courtyard. Two schools functioned from here – Pachaiyappa’s, which became a college in 1889, and Arneri Govindu Naicker’s, which began in 1865. Pachaiyappa’s College moved from here to Chetput in the 1940s but it cannot be forgotten that perhaps its best-known alumni – C.N. Annadurai – studied while it was still on NSC Bose Road.

The auditorium, which is in reality Pachiayappa’s Hall, was the venue for major public events. Madras’ protest against income tax in 1860 was begun from here. And in 1887, the Madras Jubilee Gayan Samaj was founded here and perhaps kickstarted the city’s journey in organised fine arts. Screened from public view by a series of Ionic columns, the hall, which is a massive rectangle, is accessed via an enormous doorway, the two doors of which are of rosewood. The flooring of the hall, too, is of wood. A high ceiling, with ventilators, provides coolness.

Need for restoration

Today, Pachaiyappa’s Hall is crumbling. The plaster has fallen off at various places, exposing the brickwork beneath. Windows are mere frames and the interior is dingy. The State government, which has done excellent work in restoration in recent times, needs to induce the Pachaiyappa’s Trust to take up similar work on the hall, and if necessary, support it with funds. It will be a pioneering effort where State funds go to restore a private building, in view of its importance to the city. Once done, the hall can be made to work for its own maintenance, by letting it out for events. These should be of the kind that encourage the use of public transport, for Metrorail connects Pachaiyappa’s Hall seamlessly with the rest of the city.

(Sriram V. is a writer and historian.)