100-year-old YMCA hostel gets a facelift ………Bella Jaisinghani | TNN
If you cant immediately spot the building on Lamington Road, its not worth covering, laughs the secretary of the YMCA, about their newly restored building. The Student Branch of the YMCA, essentially a boys hostel, has been granted a fresh lease in the run-up to its centenary year.
Once it turns the milestone in April 2010, the structure becomes eligible to make it to the list of protected monuments under Mumbais heritage guidelines. We are ready and waiting to welcome that honour, says Paul George, YMCA secretary, who could have razed the structure given its unprotected status but chose to restore it instead. US consul general Paul Folmsbee re-dedicated the building recently, and Martin Luther King Jr will visit the centre during his Mumbai trip on February 19.
In April 1910, the YMCA Student Branch was inaugurated by the governor of Bombay, George Sydenham Clarke. It was designed by architects Chambers & Fritchley, who had designed the Army and Navy Building in 1898 and the Knesseth Eli Synagogue in 1884.
In fact, former hostelites who were there for the re-dedication ceremony had never even seen the ground floor because it was occupied by two banks since 1968. It was only after a prolonged court battle that the YMCA managed to evict them. Then began the task of reassigning that precious space.
In 2007, YMCA invited conservation architect Vikas Dilawari to execute the work, partly because he and I are both Ivy scholars, laughs George. It is incredible that YMCA was willing to invest the Rs 1.8 crore required for restoration, says Dilawari. The third point in the love triangle became the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation which contributed US$ 30,000 or roughly Rs 13 lakh.
Apart from cosmetic changes like installing new heritagestyle flooring and bell-shaped lamps, it was the task of overhauling the structure even as 100-odd students lived inside, which posed a challenge.
Today, each floor of the three-storey hostel wears a different wall colour. The top floor, which did not have a ceiling fan or natural light, now breathes easy thanks to a sparkling new skylight. The woodwork has been polished. The elegant spiral staircase at the rear has been repainted but the door on the third floor has been kept locked. The boys are supposed to be back by 11 pm. If they miss the deadline, they scale the wall and climb the staircase to enter their rooms, laughs former caretaker Jonah.
The YMCA boys were happy to show off their refurbished quarters. Says George, We are strict about letting their girlfriends in but they begged us to allow them on this occasion. Giggling teenage girls are seated in the last row, happy at this first introduction into their beaus lives. Like their building, the boys were transformed from towel-clad saanwariyas to gentlemen in formal suits, making for a happy picture.
NEW LOOK: Each floor of the three-storey hostel wears a different wall colour. The elegant spiral staircase at the rear has been repainted