Preserving the past

"It was a huge project for us as individuals to restore the building,” Farokh Commissariat told Parsiana on June 23. The multi-tenanted Commissariat Building located on Bombay’s Dr Dadabhai Naoroji (D. N.) Road has been in their family since the time it was built in 1925.
The nearly century old building has received a new lease of life and was awarded the first prize at the HUDCO (Housing and Urban Development Corporation) Design Awards 2020-21, reported sunday mid-day (SMD) of April 4, 2021. Sadly, the patriarch, Homi Commissariat, the prime mover in the restoration project for his family-owned building passed away on April 8.
"Obtaining Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) permissions to repair the building was time consuming, coaxing tenants to cooperate, as well as the building and inhabitants’ safety while work was underway, were major concerns. All the tenants cooperated; the contractor did a fantastic job despite the constraints,” Farokh told SMD.
With a façade of Dhrangadhra stone on two sides, the building has an arcade inspired by buildings that came up on the other side of D. N. Road "after the Fort walls were demolished in the 1860s and set a new trend including uniform arcade heights, building lines,” noted SMD.

"Due to the Rent Control Act and consequently, low rents, we were unable to maintain it well,” Farokh told Parsiana. They received a notice from the BMC stating that the building was unsafe. "So we decided to restore it foundation upwards,” he told SMD. He informed the tabloid that his father was very keen that the building be restored to its original glory because he considered it to be lucky. The family’s shipping business, started by Homi’s father Framjee Commissariat who had bought James Mackintosh Company Private Limited, prospered after they moved the registered offices from Ballard Estate in the 1970s.
The restoration project, which took three years to complete, was entrusted to conservation architect Vikas Dilawari who told Parsiana: "It was a joy to see a rundown, unsafe building being brought back slowly and steadily to its original glory… This was possible because of complete support of the owner and due to (contractor) Cyrus Unwala’s team of workers who carried out the work.” He stated that "being a corner site with no open space around, loading and unloading materials and shifting it up” was a "difficulty.” The permissions took longer than anticipated and being a working building in use by tenants posed challenges.
"It is painful to see good, old buildings in rundown condition due to lack of maintenance… and then getting pulled down. Worse, the new built stock is devoid of urban design or planning, and becomes a burden on the century-old fragile infrastructure… Conservation should always be our first choice. It is economical to repair, easier to maintain old time-tested buildings and… helps preserve the original charm of a planned urban scheme,” Dilawari told SMD.