Glass House, a music hall built by the British in the mid 1800s in Udhagamandalam, stands as a poignant reminder of the need to preserve the remaining heritage structures in the hill town.
The once imposing structure, which would have hosted the best of British high-society residents in the Nilgiris, is now a spot where locals dump garbage and is also a haven for tipplers.
The floor space beneath the music hall itself, which could be accessed by performers, is exposed to the elements and only a few remnants of the building’s grandeur remain.
The Glass House or Music Hall was built almost immediately after the appearance of the first music halls in Great Britain in 1848, and is “one of the last remaining buildings which stands as a testament to the British way of life in the Nilgiris,” said Venugopal Dharmalingam, honorary director of the Nilgiri Documentation Center.
Joseph Charles Misquith was the owner of the building who used travelling performers to entertain patrons at the building, while prominent citizens like A.T.W Penn, a renowned photographer, Tonga Browne, a man who ran tonga services from Mettupalayam and Coonoor, and Thomas Eagan, who published the Nilgiri guide in 1911, were also regular visitors to the music hall.
“Later the Misquiths settled down in Burma and used to visit Ooty during summers. After independence the hall became a housing unit for several poor and middle income residents including one Kanthimathi Ammal, who was a well-known socialite of the time and famous for the woollen sweaters she knitted. The hall was partially burnt down in 1989 and has since deteriorated after it got mired in a legal tussle,” said Mr. Dharmalingam.
Local residents also said that the building had become structurally weaker over the last few years, with a portion of one of the changing rooms located near to the music hall collapsing in on itself. The walls have huge fissures running through them, hinting at the inherent weakness of the building.
G Ramdas, who has been selling tea nearby the building for over 30 years, said that he has witnessed the majority of the building being destroyed over the last couple of decades. “The building itself was much larger than the portion which still stands today, and used to draw visitors who marvelled at the architecture and splendour of the building till the late 1980’s,” he added.
The state of such structures should serve as a poignant reminder of the reasons why heritage buildings, such as the Spencer’s Supermarket, and other buildings wrapped up in legal tangles need to be protected, said V. Sivadas, Managing Trustee of the Nilgiri Environment and Cultural Service Trust.