Celebrating 100 years of the Art Deco style in Madras

Defying the trend: L.M. Chitale designed buildings in the Art Deco style, including National Insurance Building.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

It was on April 29, 1925, that the Paris Exposition formally introduced the Art Deco style to the world. It took 10 years for the form to come to Madras. In between, Bombay took to it, the Syndicate Bank building in that city being the country’s first, completed in 1932. And it was a man from the Bombay Presidency who brought Art Deco to this city.

Laxman Mahadeo Chitale (1892-1960) was noticed for his skills in drawing by Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III of Baroda and took up a draughtsman course and then apprenticed under H.V. Lanchester, who was, in the early 1900s, one of the architects consulted for the city of New Delhi. In the event he did not get that contract but went on to design Umaid Bhavan Palace in Jodhpur, one of India’s largest residences in the Art Deco style.

Corner entrance

Returning after a few years in England working with Lanchester, Chitale moved to Madras, joined the PWD, and then quit in 1932 to set up practice as an independent architect. And thus began Madras’ journey in Art Deco. His first major structure in that style in the city was the Oriental Insurance Building, on Armenian Street. Making full use of a corner plot, Chitale, in the style popularised by Sir Edwin Lutyens in Delhi, designed a building with a corner entrance, thereby maximising the sides along two streets. Oriental Insurance Building, still standing, was also the city’s first multi-storey, for it had six floors, counting two in the basement.

Bombay had already set the trend for banks and insurance companies floated by Indians building their headquarters in the Art Deco style. It was almost as though they wanted to defy British business interests by breaking free of Neo-classical, Indo-Saracenic, and Bombay Gothic. And so Madras followed suit. Chitale built many such as the National Insurance Building (1938) on China Bazaar Road and almost certainly the Andhra Insurance Building (1939). Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar took a great liking to Chitale and got him to design the Annamalai University building. He therefore designed the Annamalai Manram on the Esplanade in 1952 as well. It is a happy amalgam of Chettinad and Art Deco.

Theatres followed suit

The rest of the city was not idle. Cinema theatres, which had till then adhered to the strictly classical, and mostly with a street front box office, took to Art Deco, probably with Casino (1941). Cinema studios — Gemini, AVM, and Vijaya-Vauhini — all had even their preview theatres in Art Deco! Businesshouses found the style attractive, with Parry demolishing its old buildings and constructing a new one in 1938, the present Dare House. Even P Orr & Sons, archives reveal, toyed with an Art Deco structure to replace its Chisholm-designed building, but never got around to it. All along NSC Bose Road, the old Madras Christian College campus was sold in lots, and Art Deco edifices came up, most still standing.

Even Connemara underwent a facelift in the new style. Hotels such as Oceanic and Dasaprakash were jewels of Art Deco. In housing too, Art Deco became a trend for residences in T. Nagar, Mylapore, Alwarpet, and Adyar. Silverware and furniture took to Art Deco and print used its fonts. It was all the rage. By the 1950s though, the style was giving way to the Modernist/Brutalist made fashionable by Socialist thought.

Today, Mumbai has managed to get UNESCO protection for its Art Deco, at least for Marine Drive. We, on the other hand, have watched most of our buildings vanish. We need to protect what is left.

(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)