19-07-2025
A tale of two cities: Mumbai and Chennai
When Art Deco was introduced to the world in April 1925 at the Paris Exposition, it was in many ways a reaction to Art Nouveau, a style that was based on the premise of nature-abhorring straight lines and formal geometry. Art Deco brought geometric shapes into sharp focus once again and, interestingly, it did so with the same materials that Art Nouveau had espoused: iron, glass, concrete, and later aluminium, chromium, and mosaics.
Worldwide, the arrival of the architecture and design style coincided with many technological advances. Machinery was playing a greater role in daily life, concrete was being used increasingly for construction, large ocean liners were in vogue, and flying was just beginning to come into its own. Art Deco would make use of all these.
In America, where cinema was exploding, the new architectural form came to be closely associated with it. Studios, cinema theatres and even stars' houses came to be built in the Art Deco style. It was almost as though a new medium demanded a new architectural form. And it wasn't limited to just buildings; it extended to furniture, crockery, glassware, electric lights, even jewellery. It also influenced English typefaces.
Banks lead the way
In India, Art Deco arrived in Bombay in 1932. In many ways, it reflected the aspirations of Indians. At a time when British business houses dominated the economy, a few Indians dreamt of becoming entrepreneurs. And when it came to their offices, they chose Art Deco. The first was that of Syndicate Bank in Bombay. And soon Art Deco became the idiom of Indian-run banks, insurance companies and stockbroking firms — as though they were turning their backs on the colonial styles of Indo Saracenic and Bombay Gothic.
Bombay was by then the financial capital of India. And its Art Deco icons were large edifices with extensive decorative motifs done in concrete. Even today, many of these survive in the Fort and surrounding areas, some maintained in splendid fashion. But it was undoubtedly the Marine Drive, with its curve dominated by Art Deco buildings, that gave the city its distinctive character.
Mansions vs. flats
Madras bungalows took to Art Deco but in Bombay, where space was always a constraint, it was flats that came to be in the new style. This is also why Madras lost much of its Art Deco, as pulling down a bungalow is far easier than getting tenants and owners to vacate a block of flats. Ironically, that led to Bombay preserving much of its Art Deco and making it the second largest agglomeration of that style in the world, after Miami.
Madras was just a few years behind, its Art Deco beginning not with Dare House (1938), which houses the offices of the Murugappa Group, as is often believed, but with the Oriental Insurance Building on Armenian Street in 1936.
To see the equivalent of Bombay's Marine Drive here, we need to visit NSC Bose Road. If the British business houses were just round the corner on First Line Beach, on NSC Bose Road came up Indian edifices in Art Deco: State Bank of Mysore, Bombay Mutual, and National Insurance, which together with Dare House present almost a uniform skyline. At right angles on the Esplanade are United India, Madras (now Chennai) House and the Tamil Isai Sangam. Deeper inside are other jewels such as Andhra and Prithvi Insurance buildings. The Art Deco design did away with the portico, a standard feature of Indo Saracenic design, the buildings opened onto the street, and also introduced plenty of windows, as opposed to the verandahs of earlier design.
Cinema, the biggest ambassador
But it was undoubtedly cinema that took Art Deco to the public. As Bombay and Madras were its capitals, the style came to flourish in theatres and studios as well. The first Art Deco cinema theatre in India is almost certainly Bombay's Regal, opening for business in 1933. It was designed by Charles Stevens, whose father F.W. Stevens had designed the Victoria (now Chhatrapati Shivaji) Terminus. In Madras, Casino, which opened in 1941, was perhaps the first in the new style, and its architect was a Parsi — one of the sons of the Irani owners.
Parsi dominion
Indian architects spearheaded Art Deco in Bombay and Madras. The establishment of the Indian Institute of Architects in Bombay in 1929 had much to do with the growth of this form. Almost all the proponents were Parsis — Mistry, Bhedwar, Divecha, and Dastur, to name a few — and some Maharashtrians such as Mhatre. Madras was introduced to Art Deco by a Maharashtrian, L.M. Chitale, whose legacy includes his eponymous firm, well into the third generation. The only difference: the Madras buildings were smaller and plainer. Perhaps it reflected the local psyche.
Cinema remained faithful to the design long after it had faded elsewhere. In rural India, theatres continued to be built in the Art Deco style well into the 1960s, as it was felt that the movie-going populace associated it most closely with cinema. Worldwide, however, the style had faded by the late 1940s. World War II meant a huge disruption of shipping lines and a collapse of economy worldwide, and the Great Depression had just preceded it. When these ended, it was time for new designs reflective of socialist patterns of society.
Sadly, not much of Art Deco survives in India. While the Raj edifices were considered heritage, Art Deco was not old enough to merit protection. It is in this context that Mumbai's success in getting UNESCO recognition for its Art Deco is significant.
The writer and historian is based in Chennai.
