Mumbai: Almost 60 years after the iconic Fitzgerald Fountain was last functional, the 152-year-old monument is all set to spring back to life. According to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) heritage cell, the almost 90 per cent restoration work of the monument is complete.
The re-installation of the Pyau (drinking water fountain) has already been done but relocated few feet away from its original location near Metro cinema junction to near the Vasudev Balwant Phadke statue in Dhobi Talao now.
Cast in wrought iron, the 16-tonne monument was originally installed at the Metro Cinema Junction in 1867, in honour of Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, who was the governor of Bombay from1867 to 1872.
In 1960, the fountain was pulled down from the Metro Cinema Junction after frequent tram movement, as well as motor traffic, started congesting the area.
However, many believe that the monument was pulled down during the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement, as it bore the Royal Coat of Arms, representing the British monarch, a reminder of the British rule in India. "The move came in to ease the traffic and congestion in the area," said a senior BMC official.
It was moved to the Byculla zoo and assembled haphazardly behind the Bhau Daji Lad Museum. "Many of its parts were misplaced or lost, and it lay neglected for 60 years. In September 2018, the BMC began to restore it."
Sanjay Sawant, chief of BMC heritage cell, said, “All the pipes that made the fountain functional were missing through the years. We had to reimagine engineering and re-install them. Especially one of its lamps. We had absolutely no reference or even a picture. We then traced the contact of someone from the Eagle Foundry, the firm which originally designed the fountain. Instead of cast iron, we have now made the missing lamp of bronze.”
Nearly 90 per cent of its restoration work is now complete, but it was not an easy task for the civic heritage department. When they began the restoration work a year ago, the team realised 300 pieces of the fountain were missing. Sawant said, “We did not even know what pieces were missing, or where the once we had, we're supposed to fit.” Sawant's team then referred to old photographs of the fountain and began to fit missing pieces in the structure one by one, like a jigsaw puzzle.
The BMC’s deadline to complete restoration on the fountain was April 2020. The civic body will also beautify the area around the fountain, and develop two selfie points in its vicinity to attract tourists. Once fully functional, the fountain will use 1,000 litres of water a day, which BMC plans to reuse every day by setting up a suction tank underground.
The speciality of the Fitzgerald Fountain is that it has a twin in Northampton near London, in the UK, called the Isaac Fountain, which was installed around the same time Fitzgerald Fountain was set up in Mumbai in the 1860s. Incidentally, the Isaac Fountain was also removed from the Northampton square in the 1960s.
source https://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/mumbais-fitzgerald-fountain-to-spring-back-again
0 comments:
Post a Comment