As Calcutta grew from Charnock’s small outpost of mud
huts into a major city with a substantial European presence, the need for a
proper Town Hall for social gatherings was felt. Up until that time, major
gatherings would happen at the Old Court House, which stood where the St.
Andrews Church stands today, or at the Harmonic Tavern (presently the grounds of Laalbazaar Police Headquarters), which was frequented by
Warren Hastings’ friend, Richard Barwell. On 31st May, 1792, at
Monsieur La Gallais’ Tavern the decision was taken to raise funds for a Town Hall, through
public lottery. The building was to contain a spacious ballroom, a concert
room, dining room, card rooms, dressing rooms, suitable offices and separate
entrances for palanquins and carriages, with detached sheds for vehicles and
their horses. Through successive annual lotteries, adequate funds were arranged
by 1806, and the task of construction was entrusted to Colonel John Garstin,
the Chief Engineer.
Garstin’s design was French Palladian, with magnificent
Doric columns, and construction began on 1st December, 1807 and was
completed and opened to the public on 22nd March, 1814, but problems
plagued the Town Hall right from the start. Contemporaries of Garstin,
including prolific diarist Richard Blechynden viewed Garstin as a bit of an
upstart, and did not approve of his design, or the fact that the building cost
a monumental Rs. 700,000 to build. Soon after opening, a portion of the front portico
collapsed. Sometime later, the floor of the ballroom began to spring, and the
whole structure had to overhauled in 1818-19. As per the terms of his contract,
the expenses of the overhaul had to be borne by Garstin, which must have left his critics overjoyed.
Montague Massey writes in his “Recollections of Calcutta”,
that in the era before Saturday Club, fortnightly assembly balls were held at
the Town Hall, which were attended by all people of any respectability. Unlike
other clubs in the city, the Town Hall had no colour bar, and notable Indians
such as Dwarkanath Tagore and Surendra Nath Banerjee rubbed shoulders with
Europeans. It was in the Town Hall, that in 1895, Jagadish Chandra Bose ( after
whom A.J.C. Bose Road is named) demonstrated radio waves, and their ability to
go through solid walls, by detonating a mine inside a closed room. This was a
full year before Marconi announced his invention to the world. It was in Town
Hall that on 27th August, 1891, the Sherriff of Calcutta, Md. Farooq
Shah called a meeting to condole the death of Pundit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar.
A meeting to protest the partition of Bengal was held here as well, in 1905.
Under the custody of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation
since 1867, the Town Hall fell into disuse after Independence. With the
British, the festive balls and other social gatherings were all gone, and among
India’s new leaders, it was no longer fashionable to address people from within
the confines of a colonial structure. Various municipal offices took over the
heritage structure, some even started living within it’s premises. In 1980, the
Corporation made plans to demolish the historic Town Hall and erect in it’s
place a modern office block. The citizens of Calcutta however, would have none
of it. They formed a “Save Town Hall Committee” and their vociferous protests
forced the Corporation to back out. Again, in 1987, information leaked out that
the Corporation planned a commercial complex on the lawns of the Town Hall.
Once again protests erupted. It was at this point that the decision to preserve
it, and use it as a case study for future restorations of Calcutta’s many heritage
buildings was made.
But what was to be done with the Town Hall, and where
would the funds for it’s restoration be secured from? A lottery was no longer
possible. Hence, in an extraordinary step, 24 remarkable oil paintings by
Bengali artist Bikash Bhattacharya were auctioned at the Victoria Memorial, and
more than a crore of rupees were raised. Corporates stepped in with further
funds, and work began in earnest in 1996 for restoration and adaptive re-use of
the heritage structure. A curious discovery that was made during the restoration
was of the Town Hall’s tunnel-like exposed brick basement. The Corporation’s
Director General of Town Planning, Dipankar Sinha says, “back then, there was
little by way of water proofing. The bricks in the tunnels are exposed to let
the walls breathe. The moisture that rises from the ground evaporates through
the walls, thus the upper structure is spared the damp. This delays the decay
of a building”.
Located at 4, Esplanade Row West, the ground floor of the
Town Hall today houses the Kolkata Panorama, India’s first hi-tech storytelling
museum. The first floor is reserved for cultural functions, seminars and the
like. The basement is used for art exhibitions, in particular, sculptures,
because paintings would not survive the humidity. The ground floor also houses
the Town Hall library, started with the books donated by Calcutta’s barefoot
historian, P. Thankappan Nair. The Town Hall is open from Monday to Saturday,
from 11am to 5pm, and is closed on Sundays and public holidays.
THE KRUPP GUN
Seen on the steps of the Town Hall is the historic Boer
War cannon that was gifted to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation by the British
crown in 1905. A 75 mm cannon, manufactured by German armaments company, Krupp,
the gun was originally in the entrance of the grand staircase of the civic
headquarters until the 1940’s, when it was moved to New Market. Within New
Market, the gun was for many years a navigation aid to those who got lost in its
maze-like interiors. Restored by the Calcutta Museum Society, the gun was moved
to the steps of the Town Hall. Manufactured in 1897, it is one of only 4 Krupp
guns from the 19th Century still in existence. - by Deepanjan Ghosh
SOURCES
Calcutta - Geoffrey Moorhouse
The Social Condition of the British Community in Bengal:
1757-1800 – Suresh Chandra Ghosh
The Calcutta Cookbook – M. Dasgupta, B. Gupta, Jaya
Chaliha
Montague Massey – Recollections of Calcutta for Over Half
a Century
European Calcutta – Dhrubajyoti Banerjea
Sentiment and Self: Richard Blechynden’s Calcutta Diaries
– 1791-1822 – Peter Robb
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