Mumbai: Reopening with a reminder; when stones tell history of a bridge

Indian Express

27-04-2025

On a November night, three years ago, when 500 people were busy dismantling the 154-year old Carnac bridge, one of the first bridges to be built in the island city, a group of civic and railway officials discovered six basalt stones from the rubble of debris that were gathered at the demolition site.
What caught the attention of officials was that the six stones had inscriptions engraved upon them that were primarily in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi and English languages.
The inscriptions included the year 1858 when the construction of the bridge began and the year 1868, when the construction works were completed.
The four other stones had the name of the bridge inscribed in four different languages along with an 'anchor' which officials state was a symbol for 'good luck and prosperity' brought through maritime trade.
'Larger portions of the original bridge were made of Basalt stone. During the 19th and 20th century, basalt stones were primarily used for civil construction. Since, Mumbai had a colonial past, almost every major building or structure that was built during that era was made of Basalt. As a result, these kinds of stones were not something new to us, but it was the inscriptions that were present on them that distinguished them from others,' said a senior civic official who was present on the night of demolition when the stones were discovered.
Civic officials said that the stones were originally located underneath a pillar on the eastern and western portion of the bridge. However, the officials became aware of it only during the demolition drive.
After the stones blocks were found, they were transported to the Central Railways Heritage Gully (lane) located at P'D Mello road – behind Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) for preservation, where they were kept for the past three years.
As a newly constructed Carnac bridge is set to be reopened on June 10, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started to make arrangements to bring back these stones and keep them preserved at the newly constructed bridge to signify the bridge's importance to the city of Mumbai.
'The Carnac bridge has a rich past and the bridge belongs to the BMC, therefore, the stones ideally should be there. We have written to the railways demanding the stones from them, as soon as we get them under our possession we will refurbish it if required and place them at the site of the new bridge,' Abhijit Bangar, Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects), told The Indian Express.
On April 17, the BMC's deputy chief engineer of the bridges department had also written to the Central Railways demanding refixation of the stones on the newly constructed bridge.
Built in 1868, the Carnac bridge was one of the oldest east-west bridges to come up in the island city of Mumbai (then Bombay). A testament to the times when the city experienced a financial boom and rapidly emerged to become one of the financial epicenters of south Asia.
Bharat Gothoskar, founder of KHAKI heritage foundation and a chronicler of Mumbai's history, told The Indian Express that during the 1840s, new docks such as Carnac Bunder, Clare Bunder and Clerk Bunder were built north of the Fort of Mumbai as a result of which both Indian and foreign ships started docking at these bunders to discharge their goods.
'The building of the railway line to Thane in the 1850s created an obstacle to the smooth movement of goods between the docks and the city, and in 1868, the Carnac Bridge was built over the railway line, connecting Carnac Bunder (Indira Docks' Yellow Gate today) to Carnac Road (Lokmanya Tilak Marg today). All three, the bridge, the bunder and the road, were named after Sir James Rivett-Carnac, who served as Governor of Bombay 1839 to 1841,' Gothoskar said.
The stones are primarily black coloured each weighing up to 1.5-2 tonnes.
Urban planner and architect, Pankaj Joshi said that between 1860 and 1930, the island city of Mumbai witnessed rapid infrastructure growth. Joshi said that considering the technological limitations stones were preferred for construction of infrastructure projects as steel was very expensive.
'There were quarries in Titwala and in areas of the suburbs of Mumbai, which are known today as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). Basalt stones were preferred for construction works because of their tensile strength and durability. These stones were locally available and had variable colours like black, yellow and cream. Besides the Carnac bridge, heritage buildings like the Rajabai Tower and CSMT building were also built with yellow and cream basalt stones,' Joshi said.
The bridge was pulled down in 2022 jointly by the civic and railway authorities after a structural audit declared that the bridge was unfit for daily usage and needed to be reconstructed.
The mammoth operation of pulling down the old Carnac Bridge lasted for nearly 18-hours.
The construction of the new bridge began in early 2023. At present, the work is nearing completion.
'The new bridge will be wider and higher. The roads will be smooth and will be able to accommodate larger traffic volume decongesting key south Mumbai locations,' Bangar said.