Mysore realises it had left its ‘living heritage’ to die

The ‘city of palaces’ may take tough steps after four people were killed when the roof of a shop of the heritage Lansdowne building crashed on Saturday.

The district administrators woke up to the fact that it could pose more dangers if commercial activity was to be continued in the building. The Mysore City Corporation closed the building for all its occupants for a week starting from Sunday.

“We are worried about the state of the building. The city corporation and the district administration officials with civil engineers from the state heritage structures department will carry out a study. Using modern methods, they will assess the strength of the material that holds the building together,” city mayor MC Rajeshwari said.

District in-charge minister SA Ramdas said a technical team comprising the president of Karnataka Task Force, civil aid technician CS Vishwanath, engineering expert Shakib-ur-Rehman and an expert from the Indian Heritage Cities Network, would give a report to the corporation in a week. “The decision on whether to allow any human activity in the building will be taken only after the report. The traders operating in the building have appealed to the district committee to repair the building and keep it as ‘living heritage building,” Ramdas said.

The building could go down in history as one of the earliest colonial malls in the state built in 1892. But it had never been treated on the same lines as other heritage buildings in the city. It was altered, used for all sorts of commercial activities and, most of all, it was not maintained in the way it should have been.