Vadodara: For more than a century this august premises built character in early childhood, but now it’s set to nurture health.
‘Shala Number Ek’ located in Raopura — believed to be the first vernacular school in the city — served as a school before being used by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) for some key offices. Now, it will house a hospital.
While there is no clarity regarding the exact date of construction of the school, experts say that it is almost 150-years-old, a fact revealed in maps too.
Architect and convener of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), Vadodara Sanjiv Joshi said that the building was marked as vernacular school on the map of the 1884 survey.
“It is denoted as vernacular school and could be the first formal school built in the city. While this school was in Gujarati medium, those that came up near Sursagar were called Anglo vernacular school implying that they were bilingual,” he said.
Explaining the significance of the building Joshi said that the school building had come up even before the Raopura Tower. He said that during the reign of Sayajirao Gaekwad III, education institutes served as grand urban edifices in the cityscape.
While apprehensions were rife regarding the fate of the school after the plan was drawn to make an urban community health centre at the site, it has come to light that the plan was to use the same building for the hospital. VMC’s medical officer (health) Dr Devesh Patel said that the hospital would come up in the existing building that had very large rooms.
The hospital will be sponsored by the Baroda Medical College Alumni Association (BMCAA). Patel said that the project would have been finalised by now, but there were no developments due to Covid-19. “The building is a heritage building and will be spruced up as a part of the project,” he said.