Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

A home of its own

Robert Chisholm.

Also to be dedicated today is the resurrected Senate House, the first home of the University of Madras. Today, with the work 80 per cent complete, the Senate House stands as a glorious example of classical restoration. Its Great Hall, the Vice Chancellor's room in the northern wing, and the most ornate of the smaller halls — a little known space on the first floor of the southern wing — are truly areas of great beauty. When the domes are complete, there won't be a heritage building in the State to match it in splendour. Truly will it again be one of the great Indo-Saracenic buildings of India, living up to what it has been called, even when it was in a state of disrepair, "a work of genius". Together with the Presidency College, PWD and Revenue Board buildings — the last-named the northern extension of Chepauk Palace — it was designed, supervised, decorated and furnished by Robert Fellowes Chisholm, virtually just out of Britain when he arrived in Madras from Calcutta in 1865. Before he left India in 1902, apart from changing the Madras skyline, he had become renowned for creating the Lakshmi Vilas Palace and Museum, Baroda, the Napier Museum, Trivandrum, the Lawrence School, Ooty, and the Anglican Cathedral, Rangoon. Truly he is one of the great figures in the history of post-1500 architecture in South India.

S. MUTHIAH

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail