A Photo Feature
The Museum Theatre is a delightful Olde English creation with a ‘pit’ in its semi-circular auditorium meant for the higher-priced seats and seating for the rest in tiered rows arranged all round. This 19th Century creation vies with the oldest building in the Museum for antiquarian attention; especially now that the Theatre has been tastefully restored.
The San Thome Basilica of today was consecrated on this site in 1896, a handsome Gothic church with a towering steeple over the entrance and a smaller steeple over the crypt in which a few relics of, and an abiding faith in, Thomas Dydimus remain. In the cathedral is one of the most perfect pieces of stained glass in Madras.
In the 18th Century, Chepauk Palace was the lone building between the Fort St George and San Thome. But in the latter half of the 19th Century there began building for education which gave Madras a recognisable skyline a hundred years later. Further south, a new examination hall was built as part of the expanding University’s construction in the 1930s, adding grandeur to the Madras skyline. Facing it today is the statue of the scholar-saint Tiruvalluvar.
The Big (or Wallajah) Mosque in Triplicane, built in 1975 by the Nawab’s family for the large congregation in the area,is one of the most beautiful in the city. It is also the biggest.
The 55,000 sq. feet General Post Office was opened for business in 1884, almost 175 years after postal services had been established in Madras. Damage during an early 20th Century storm resulted in the ‘caps’ on the 125-feet tall main towers of the Post Offi ce being removed. A fi re in the building in 2003 gutted the building’s interior.
In the early 1930s, Bharatanatyam was not for well brought up girls. Rukmini Devi decided to change that – and succeeded in bringing the classical Indian temple art form out from behind closed doors. The school she established on the Theosophical Society’s campus soon flowered and grew into Kalakshetra (The Temple of Art), one of the world’s most renowned institutions of South Indian classical music and dance. The institution’s auditorium, built in traditional Kerala style and with Rukmini Devi Arundale remembered in front of it.
Until 1946, the River Adyar was the southern boundary of Madras. In the days when the river fl owed fast and Man had not taken over its banks, the huge sand banks the river formed were islands in its estuary. And on these islands, Man later built some of the most magnifi cent mansions of Madras. One of them is Chettinad Palace, a handsome pile on Quibble Island when seen from the river and a stately presence when seen from its driveway. Built in the fi rst half of the 20th Century, it is the home of the heirs of Rajah Sir Annamalai Chettiar of Chettinad, founder of Annamalai University.