It’s elementary, dear Watson

At long last, efforts are on to conserve the city’s first luxury hotel

Decaying footboards on the wooden staircase, missing rivets in the girders, bamboo proppings supporting the ceilings, garbage dumps in the central courtyard which had once been a dining hall...

A first-time visitor to the city could be forgiven for not recognising the unique building which had once been way ahead of its time - the Watson’s Hotel alias Esplanade Mansion at Kala Ghoda.

Two years after it made it to the New York-based World Monuments Fund (WMF) list of “100 Endangered Monuments”, efforts are afoot to protect the heritage building. The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) — responsible for maintainance of pre-1940 buildings — has joined hands with Kala Ghoda Association and Urban Design Research Institute (DRI) to salvage it. With funding a major concern, the cost is roughly estimated at Rs 3 crore, the group is planning to organise fairs and seek assistance from corporates, and even the WMF.

The group came into being after the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC) recently rejected repair plans submitted by MHADA. “We had no option but to ask them seek expert’s assistance as the MHADA engineers, though supportive, have no expertise in maintaining heritage buildings,” said an MHCC member.

“With no budgetary provision allowing them to call bids, the engineers prefer to replace decaying railings made from cast iron, or roofs of burma teak - like those noticed in dilapidated chawls at Gamdevi and Kalbadevi - with concrete.”

In case of Watson’s, the signs of decay had been far too many. But recommendations for its maintainance were largely ignored. Piecemeal repairs to the Grade 2-A heritage building was conducted by architects with no conservation experience. Original cast-iron columns and wrought-iron floor members are now coupled with brick walls. Matters incidentally, came to a head only last year when three of the building’s balconies collapsed killing one person.

Flashback: An enterprising Englishmen John Watson gave the city its first large and well run hotel. A wealthy merchant who owned a successful drapery and hosiery shop on the south side of Churchgate street, Watson realised the potential offered by the prominent sites on the western side of the Esplande that became available when the Fort ramparts were demolished.

At the government auction held in 1864, he bid successfully for a plot on the Esplanade at a steep rate of Rs 110 per sq yard. The construction of the hotel was well in progress by 1867. All the building materials for the handsome 5-storeyed cast iron frame structure, equipped with 130 rooms, were imported from England. The red stone plinth and the bases of the columns came directly from the town of Penrith in Cumberland, the county from which Watson hailed.

He tried to make his hotel as “home-like” as possible, bringing from England a staff of maids and waitresses. The hotel was auctioned in 1909 and Watson returned to Cumberland.