CHENNAI: 100 years and counting...
With a staff strength of 1500, the three-storey heritage structure on EVR Periyar Salai next to Central Station houses the office of the General Manager and the offices of several other departments of the zonal railway.
The massive three-storey structure in present-day Chennai was inaugurated on November 11, 1922 by The Lady Willingdon, wife of Freeman- Thomas, 1st Marquees of Willington, the then Governor of Madras.
The foundation stone for the structure was laid on February 8, 1915 by Lord Pentland the then Governor of Madras for building a headquarters for a company named Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Company (M & SMR).
Designed by N Grayson, an architect and employee of the erstwhile Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, the palatial building is based on the Dravidian style of classical architecture. The foundation of the Indo - Saracenic type structure consists of a reinforced concrete raft from 5 to 8 feet below the ground level set upon a stratum of pure sand, nearly 20 foot deep, said a statement from the railways.
The building was constructed by T Samynada Pillai, a Bangalore-based contractor at a cost of Rs 30.76 lakh and took nearly 7 months and 15 days to lay the foundation structure consisting of 500 tons of steel bars embedded in 10,000 tonnes of granite concrete. H H Wadia & Bros, pioneers in quarrying Porbundar stones were instrumental in bringing Porbundar stones from Gujarat.
The stones were transported for 8 years via sea to Kerala and then by rail to Madras. HH Wadia & Bros camped in Madras from 1913 to 1922 along with their team of skilled masons from Porbundar under the leadership of master mason Pitambar Hira. Each of the four corner domes of this majestic edifice houses water tanks with a total capacity of about 35,000 gallons (1.32 lakh litre). After seven long years of intensive labour and a massive investment of Rs 30,76,400, the building was opened on December 11, 1922.