[MSN] India. Heritage vandalism

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Heritage vandalism
- Metropolitan building under siege 
A STAFF REPORTER 
  
A shattered stained glass window of Metropolitan Building. Picture by Aranya
Sen:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060603/asp/calcutta/story_6303046.asp#
  
Save the dome with the clock, from which the scaffolding has not yet been
removed, Metropolitan Building on Chowringhee looks as if this century-old
beauty has emerged from the plastic surgeon's clinic after a complete
makeover. It has a brand new epidermis and silicon implants at the right
places to bolster its sagging fabric.

But the wealth of stained glass on the Chowringhee and the SN Banerjee Road
sides has been destroyed and replaced with sheet glass. If this is
restoration, what is vandalism?

Stained glass artist Katayun Saklat, who visited the building, said the
rainbow-hued glass, which resembled Charles Rennie Mackintosh's, was part
and parcel of the architecture. "Planned with such thought and designed with
such care, it could have been a masterpiece of a building," she added. This
building that once used to house Whiteway Laidlaw, the most luxuriant
department store on this side of the Suez, is listed as a heritage structure
by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. That makes it immune to structural
change, but what could be worse than this?

Soon after the Life Insurance Corporation decided to restore both this
building and Queens Mansion on Park Street after nearly two decades of
neglect, there was a concerted effort to strip the building of its Italian
marble flooring. The water sprinkler, that was a fire-fighting device, was
removed.

Now, a couple of years after the "restoration" project began and crores were
spent, the building interior looks like the contractor is trying to
demonstrate what happens when a bull invades a chinashop. After Thursday's
shower, it poured inside. 

Not just the floors, even the beautiful wooden staircases were waterlogged.
Work on the walls, floors and roof has all been left incomplete. So, even
before the mortar gets time to set, it is washed out by the pipeline deluge.