Egmore Railway Station

Egmore railway station never fails to bring back nostalgic memories of the railway announcements and the weighing machines that told us amusing things. The place is now quite the maze because of its size and the sheer number of trains it operates today. If you don’t know your way around platforms you might get lost in here.

The Egmore railway station is 109 years old. It stands on a historic sitewhere the East India Company converted a standing choultry into a fortified redoubt. It later served as a sanatorium for soldiers and then in the 1800s as a Government Press. The Male and Female Orphan Asylums functioned from here when they moved out of Fort St George in the mid-18th Century.
By the late 19th/early 20th Century, a part of this property was owned by Senjee Pulnee Andy (1831-1909).This was acquired by the South Indian Railway Company as a suitable location for its northern terminus. The Egmore ­station cost Rs. 17 lakh to build and was completed in 1908. The design was by Henry Irwin and E. C. Bird. The contractor was T. Samynada Pillai of Bangalore who also ­constructed the Madura and Trichinopoly stations of the SIR. It was one of the early instances of usage of concrete in Madras. The structure also had another first – incorporation of Dravidian motifs within the Indo-Saracenic genre. The Egmore Railway station remained a pristine architectural structure complete with wooden staircases and mystical interiors until the 1980’s after which it had to give in to the population burst .The name Egmore is now synonymous to the smell of dried fish, the sea of people and a whole lot of chaos.

Source: Madrasmusings | Wikipedia
Photo: wiele & Klien, Madras.

The National Art Gallery

The national art gallery today may appear like a jewel in the rough amidst the construction rods and debris but the original building constructed by Henry Irwin is a testimony to the Indo- Saracenic style. It is one of the most stunning buildings at the Madras Museum complex in Egmore which houses one of the finest art and historical artefacts in the country.
It was considered to be one of the oldest art galleries in India, it had around 175 collections of paintings including Ravi Varma, Tanjore, Deccan, Rajasthan, and Mughal. Wood and ivory carvings, metal and bronze objects and British era portraits were among the other works of art housed there.

The building was constructed to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden jubilee and the foundation stone laid in 1906. The grand exhibition was hall built in ornate Jaipuri Mughal style, with characteristic pink sand stone and madras polished plaster and marble flooring. The Main entrance to the hall resembles that of Akbar’s palace at Fatehpur Sikri. The Victoria Technical Institute ran out of this building until it was taken over by the government to be used as an armoury during the Second World War and was later renamed as the National art gallery in 1951.

Years of weathering and unplanned construction activities in the neighbourhood, including high-raised buildings, led to deep cracks on the building. The architectural marvel is now being renovated by the Government of Tamil Nadu under the guidance of the heritage committee and the PWD.

Source: Madras Rediscovered | Madras Musing.