Screw Pile Pier, 1860’s

Ports and harbours are signs of thriving economic activity in any civilisation. The ever bustling madras port was first suggested by warren Hastings in 1770 when he was posted here, who later became the first Governor General of India. However, it was not until the 1850s that work began on a pier to berth vessels following suggestions from the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Till 1815, it was an open roadstead and exposed sandy coast, swept by occasional storms and monsoons🌊. At that time, the natural harbour was so shallow that ships had to anchor over 1 km offshore, and cargo was delivered to and from the shore in masula boats and  catamarans. Cargo losses were high so the government decided to build a pier. 

Governor Charles Trevelyan screwed down the first pile in 1859 ⚓ and the 1,000 feet long, 40 feet broad pier with a ‘T’-head 160 feet by 40 feet was built perpendicular to the shore, inaugurated for use on December 16, 1861.

A cyclone🌪️ on June 6, 1868 damaged this pier and another cyclone on May 2, 1872 wrecked it. The pier was out of operation for 15 months and by 1874, the pier was made operational again. 

Source: The Hindu | S.Muthiah | British Library.

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 Buckingham Canal

The Buckingham Canal, one of the longest in the country, has a total length of 1079km. It has been an integral facet of Chennai since 1800 when the Government was anxious to build a navigable canal from Ennore to Madras by utilising the seasonal river Elambore. In 1801, Heefke And Basil Cochrane commenced the excavation of a canal, for small craft, from the northwest Blacktown wall through strips of land and shallow backwaters from Madras to Ennore, a distance of 11 miles.The work was finished in 1806 by Basil Cochrane who, in 1802, had obtained the entire control of the Canal. This portion was named Cochrane’s Canal. This canal was soon afterwards extended by him to Pulicat Lake, 25 miles north of Ennore. The canal remained the property of Cochrane till 1837, when he left India, leaving its management to Arbuthnot & Co. It was then taken over by the Government in 1847. In 1852, extensive improvements to the existing line of canal and further northward extension were undertaken.
In 1875 when the duke of Buckingham took over as governor, Madras was faced with one of the worst famines which lasted till 1878. To help the people during the crisis, the Duke created an eight- kilometre stretch of island- a canal that linked the adyar river with the cooum near its mouth, just behind the present university buildings.
The extension of the canal to the northern limit at Peddaganjam was completed in 1878, and its extension to the southern limit at Marakkanam was completed in 1882. The 20km urban stretch of this waterway was called the Buckingham canal but inevitably the entire system was bestowed with the name of the duke and Cochrane was forgotten.
The entire canal 9-11 yards with 28 locks was a cheap means of transportation back then. At the beginning of the 20th century as many as 1500 boats used to ply on it regularly from mamallapuram to mylapore. Today very few boats use this canal to travel from ennore to Nellore in Andhra.
The urban stretch of the canal has been lost forever due to various reasons such as high cost and the inefficient desilting process in summer. A boat ride across the city will remain a distant dream to many a history afficionados.

Anna Flyover 1973.

Gemini Bridge is a name that is almost synonymous to Madras and now Chennai. A day spent in Chennai is not complete without driving past this dear old friend. People have dropped his surname, they fondly call him Gemini! Even though his name board says otherwise.
It is curious that the name Anna flyover didn’t stick despite C.N. Annadurai being one of the most celebrated leaders and chief ministers of Tamil Nadu. Gemini in Gemini Flyover refers to the Famous Gemini Film Studio which was the pioneer of Tamil Cinema that was once located in the present day Park hotel area. Sometimes it feels as though this bridge was Chennai’s middle finger to the other metropolitan cities considering that it was built way back in 1973 at a whopping amount of Rs. 6.6 million and opened to public on July 1, 1973 by the then chief minister Karunanidhi. It was the longest and one of the top rate flyovers at that time in India.

It was Chennai’s first step in to the big leagues and making its mark as a city with excellent infrastructure and that has led to the city being known today as the Detroit of India.Gemini Flyover, is a dual-armed flyover with a 24 ft access ramp on Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road to link up with the main flyover, just south of the intersection. An elliptical path called ‘Clover-leaf’ links up with GN Chetty Road at the ground level, through a longer span specially provided to relieve heavy traffic in the main flyover.
Today Chennai is criss crossed with flyovers and much more are bound to come up thanks to the ever growing population but Gemini flyover will always remain etched in the minds of the people.

Source: The Hindu

Marmalong Bridge, Saidpet

In 1726, one of the most popular bridges of Madras was being built — Marmalong Bridge, the first across the Adyar River. Built by the Armenian Coderjee Petrus Uscan (who came to Madras in 1724) with his own money, the bridge was named Marmalong after Mambalam, a village on the Adyar River, west of San Thome. On a very elegant and well-known plaque set on this bridge, the merchant indicated, within an inscription in three languages (Armenian, ­Persian, Latin): “This bridge was built for public interest by Coja Petrus Uscan, belonging to the Armenian nation, A.D. 1726.”
In 1966, Petrus Uscan’s bridge was destroyed and replaced by today’s Saidapet Bridge. But in those days the plaque had been preserved and moved to the end of the new bridge where it remained in an dilapidated condition. There is no trace of Uscan’s arched bridge or the Armenian heritage of Madras but it is crucial to preserve these facets of Madras to reinstate Chennai as a multicultural place and not just another temple town. ///New Bridge is in the photograph