Metro Plus
Chennai
Hyderabad
The North Beach highrise
|
The TIAM House on North Beach Road (now Rajaji Salai), the headquarters of the Murugappa Group, was the first modern highrise in Chennai to reach completion.
|
MODERN HIGHRISE, particularly of the variety that's all steel, glass and concrete, had their beginnings in Madras in the 1950s. And the first to reach completion was TIAM House on North Beach Road (now Rajaji Salai), the headquarters of the Murugappa Group. But work had started even earlier, by the same design and building team, on what would have been the first landmark building of the modern era in the city, only a change of ownership making the LIC Building, nee United India Building, lose out to TIAM House. That's a story that deserves a little more attention than I had paid to it in Madrascapes on January 1.
Designing the two buildings was Brown and Moulin of the U.K., the firm comprising the former, a hard-headed businessman, the latter described by those connected with both buildings as a "wonderful architect". The British input was needed, as there was no know-how in India at the time for laying the foundation for, and raising, such tall steel-framed buildings. The knowledge that Brown and Moulin brought to some of the first modern high-rise in India enabled two trouble-free buildings to be built at a time when many in the country were sceptical about such construction. Brown and Moulin then decided to establish themselves in Delhi and were responsible for the first buildings of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, but in the end even Brown could not handle the maze India's fiscal policies led them into and the company returned to England after considerable losses.
Guided by Brown and Moulin in raising the two buildings was a comparatively new building outfit, Coromondel Engineering. Its origins were in Eric Coe of Richardson & Cruddas supervising the sanitary engineering work in the art deco house. A.M.M. Arunachalam was building in 1945/46 on Chittaranjan Road, Teynampet. That house, now the Consul General for Japan's home, was recently reconstructed down to its original façade, but with one rounded corner left in the original. Coe, who had during the War worked on several military projects Richardson & Cruddas had handled in Madras, had learnt much civil engineering on the job as well as put his knowledge to good supplementary use when The Laurels was being built by AMM. Impressed with Coe's dedication and construction, and foreseeing a building boom in the post-Independence India, AMM and elder brother Murugappa invited Coe to join them in founding Coromandel Engineering. It was a firm to be further strengthened by M.M. Nawas, a British Chartered Engineer, who had returned to Madras from independent Ceylon in 1948. Together, with Murugappa monitoring the finances, AMM securing the major orders, the short-tempered Coe pushing every job to completion before schedule and Nawaz pouring oil on stormy customer waters stirred by Coe and ensuring the highest quality, the team made Coromandel Engineering a formidable construction outfit.
Starting with building the Willingdon Nursing Home, Coromandel Engineering went on to built the TI factory and the Ashok Motors plant that was home first to Austin assembly, then became Ashok Leyland's first manufacturing unit. But Coromandel Engineering's finest hour was the raising of the two Brown and Moulin buildings.
M. Ct. M. Chidambaram Chettiyar, who believed that his office buildings should reflect the success of his businesses, had built some handsome art deco buildings in various parts of South India for his United India Insurance. But he dreamed of a landmark building as its headquarters, a building that would be the tallest in South India. And so, in the early 1950s, he commissioned the building of United India Building, supervising much of the early construction himself. Unfortunately, his tragic death when still a young man and, later, the nationalisation of insurance led to the building opening only in 1959 — as the Life Insurance Corporation of India's southern headquarters building, its height still making it a landmark in the city.
Around the same time, the TI Group (now the Murugappa Group) was thinking of raising a headquarters building for itself. And the site it eyed was on NSC Bose Road on which were the handsome classical-styled buildings of that had once belonged to Madras Christian College and High School. When the educational institutions moved to Tambaram and Nungambakkam, the Travancore National and Quilon Bank - formed in 1937, through the merger of the Travancore National Bank (1912) and Quilon Bank (1919), to become one of the South's most powerful banking institutions — bought the three buildings to establish its Madras Presidency headquarters. The sudden run on the bank only a year or so later led to the receivers taking over all its properties. It was these properties that came up for auction in the early 1950s. And the TI Group decided to bid for the headquarters building.
It was a bid not made when the Bombay Mutual Insurance Company approached Murugappa and suggested that the needs of a mutual insurance company were perhaps greater than that of a privately owned company. And so Bombay Mutual took over the property, but Coromandel Engineering got to build the art deco-style Bombay Mutual Building that opened in 1955. The next year, the Classical-styled Khaleeli Building was offered to the Murugappa Group by the brothers Ameen and Khaleeli. They had first offered it for Rs.1 lakh to Best & Co., from whom they had bought it in the 1930s, to run their hides and skins business, which had a roller-coaster history. Best's was not interested in moving back into its former premises, but, having proposed Murugappa as the first Indian member of the Madras Chamber of Commerce, as far back as 1931, and having continued its links with him, now passed on the word to him. And so, Khaleeli Building became the TI Group's in 1956 and on its site was raised the city's first fully air-conditioned tower block with its owners moving into it from Armenian Street in 1958. The change of the North Beach skyline had begun. Years later, when AMM was asked by this writer about the TI Group's role in pulling down heritage buildings like the MCC's and Best's, he candidly replied, sending out a message to all corporates, "In those days, we were just not aware of the importance, necessity and value of heritage preservation. As a family we have always strongly believed in tradition, but somehow it never occurred to us that the handsome buildings the British left behind in Madras were also an intrinsic part of this tradition. It's only since the 1980s that there has been a growing awareness of living heritage and as we too became aware of the wider scope of tradition, we have attempted to play a role in making people aware of the heritage of Madras. We can't undo the past, but heritage in the future can be assured of the Murugappa Group's support."
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
