Finally, a fresh lease of life for Victoria Public Hall in Chennai

The Hindu

4 days ago

So the long-awaited restoration of Victoria Public Hall ends, and we have a magnificent Town Hall once again. The photographs of it illuminated at night had me regretting is that S. Muthiah, Tara Murali and K. Kalpana (the conservation architect who worked on Senate House) are not around to see it. All three expressed the hope that the building will one day regain its place as a city centre.
It is spoken of as being Indo-Saracenic in style of which there is very little in the design. It is more Roman and topping it is a Travancore cap, a finial that RF Chisholm the architect adored ever since he designed the Napier Museum in Thiruvananthapuram. In many ways it complements Central Station and the old Moore Market. The Raja Sir Savalai Ramaswami Mudaliar Choultry which stands diagonally opposite was also planned and executed at the same time (1882-1887) is far more Indo-Saracenic than V.P. Hall.
That said, V.P. Hall had all the history. Within a decade of its completion it had played host to Swami Vivekananda, fresh from his success at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago. In 1915, Mahatma Gandhi spoke here. The list of speakers at V.P. Hall is long indeed. Also impressive is its contribution to sport. Thanks to the Chennapuri Andhra Maha Sabha and the South Indian Athletic Association which were tenants in the ground floor for long, it was where tennis, billiards, chess, athletics and table tennis, all found a home. Many competitions were held here and many were the champions it produced.
It was its long tryst with theatre that made V.P. Hall also an important centre for nationalist and Dravidian politics. The Suguna Vilasa Sabha (SVS) which was a tenant on the ground floor, made it the venue for plays it hosted from the 1890s. Most members of the SVS were lawyers, who led political thought. S. Satyamurti was an active member and many of his kind were nationalists. Several others were Justice Party members and it in fact had its first meeting at V.P. Hall in 1916, thereby making it the birthplace of Dravidian politics.
V.P. Hall was also where cinema in Madras was first displayed, in December 1896. With that the city's long-standing affair with that medium began and ironically it was to spell doom for V.P. Hall. With the SVS vacating in the 1930s, the hall was the venue for many social reform plays and it was at a staging of his Chandrodayam here in 1943 that Anna was introduced to MGR! But the growth of cinema meant the slow decline of theatre and by the 1960s V.P. Hall was no longer what it was. The trust that administered it even contemplated demolishing it and building a cinema theatre here and it was Anna as CM who scotched the move in 1967.
The 99-year lease of the 57 grounds at a rent of 50 paisa per ground ended in 1985 and litigation began between the trust and the Corporation of Chennai. A hotel had come up fronting the hall and to its rear the Chennapuri Andhra Maha Sabha had built its own premises. All of these were evicted/demolished in 2010 following a High Court order and work began on restoration. Even prior to this, in the 1990s, industrialist Suresh Krishna as Sheriff of Madras took initiatives to restore it. But several fits and starts later, the current restoration, largely spearheaded at Chief Ministerial insistence, has been the most comprehensive. Heritage deserves a few success stories every now and then.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian)