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| British-era building .hindustantimes.com |
Since the fire accident in 2015 that had severely damaged the British-era building in Amritsar Punjab that housed the office of Amritsar deputy commissioner (DC), it had not been used for a long time and in 2016 the Punjab state government made a proposal for urgent renovation to breathe new lease of life into the structure that stands as a vestige of the British rule in India. This project, Coming under the National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) scheme, the union ministry's grant of Rs 2-crore was meant to restore the structure back to old world charm. The state government had a plan either to convert it into a museum or a heritage restaurant.
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Gutted British-era bldg. 2015, DC office, Amritsar .hindustantimes.com
Above image: The DC’s chamber in the colonial building had suffered extensive damage in the fire mishap, while there’s no sign left of the main courtroom outside. The renovation work began in 2017 under the direction of INTACH and the work was to be completed by 2018. The walls were quite safe, but the ceiling and flooring had to be laid................
The building that came up in mid-1850s was gutted in May 2015 and the firefighters had to struggle for several hours to put down the missive inferno. In the aftermath of this major fire accident This more than 150-year-old heritage structure was considerably damaged. Because of prevailing wind condition, the flames started spreading quickly from the top floor, destroying all administrative and revenue records, some were about 200 years old, kept on the first floor as officials could reach the ground-floor record section only. The upper floor rooms with wooden flooring were used to store pretty old paper documents and consequently it not only caused severe damages, but also the fire simmered for a long time. This renderd the building unsafe for occupation.
As the DC office that had been here since the inception of the building, was to be shifted to a new complex, plans were afoot to preserve the colonial building without compromising on its heritage aspects and put it to reuse. Apart on May 26 2016 the roof cave-in, had impacted the main courtroom outside the chamber of DC then being used by the DC.The heritage specialist INTACH was entrusted with the job of restoration work and the made on the spot survey as to bring the structure back to life with old splendor. Experts were keen to use the traditional old contraction technique by using materials matching those used in the past.
