Evoking a bygone era

Jogeshwari’s Malcolm Baug and the Theosophical Society in Santa Cruz (which housed several Parsis in an earlier era), are among the four residential societies to be preserved as heritage precincts. This recommendation has come from the state appointed Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC) in a bid to preserve the architectural beauty and peculiarities of several of Bombay’s quaint community-based societies, reported The Times of India (TOI) of May 27, 2008.

A detailed survey of eight residential societies in the western suburbs was undertaken by the MHCC before the panel recommended that various colonial-era bungalows and cottages in these societies be protected with heritage status as their architectural styles are part of the city’s heritage. All these societies stand on collector’s land and were given to different communities on 999-year lease by the Bombay Improvement Trust in the 1920s as part of a drive to promote growth and development in the suburbs. Though well planned, with gridiron rods, regular-shaped plots and open spaces, they are rapidly undergoing redevelopment, with many bungalows giving way to multi-storey apartment blocks.

The societies have various types of residential units, including bungalows, townhouses, villas, cottages and cha­wls, informs TOI. Malcolm Baug has been notified as a precinct and four of its bungalows listed as heritage structures. Mostly built in the 1930s, the bungalows on the main road are "stylistically more articulate than the ones that are inside.” Many have front verandahs, steep sloping roofs, wooden parapets and tree-laden compounds. The Theosophical Society too has a group of bungalows with similar compound walls, sloping roofs, verandahs, entrance porches and wooden doors and windows, TOI lists.

The other societies surveyed include St Sebastian and Salsette Catholic, both in Bandra, and Bombay Catholic in Santa Cruz (Christian), Laxmi Nagar in Khar (Gujarati), Pathare Prabhu also in Khar (Maharashtrian) and Saraswat Baug Bungalows in Jogeshwari (Goud Saraswat Brahmin). The MHCC draft list will be forwarded to the municipal commissioner and the state urban development department for approval.

Andheri’s M. F. Cama Athornan Institute

The MHCC has also recommended that eight educational institutes in the central and western suburbs of Bombay be protected, TOI of May 30, 2008 reports. Though most of these are missionary schools and educational institutions, included in the list are the M. F. Cama Athornan Institute in Andheri, the M. N. Banaji Industrial Home for the Blind in Jogeshwari and the Petit Bandra Municipal School in Bandra. The unique feature of the Cama Athornan Institute is its "eclectic building with an entrance porch in Persian style, an arcaded verandah, a stone colonnade and stone work in relief on cornices.” The Banaji Industrial Home for the Blind, built in 1908, is "stylistically a Parsi building with a characteristic porch, water fountain, Tuscan columns, floor bands in stucco and cast-iron grills,” TOI informs readers, while the Petit Bandra Municipal School’s "complex roofing and careful carpentry put this building in a colonial vernacular idiom of the craftsmen era.”