As beautiful old bungalows across Pune are torn down to make way for modern structures, the owners of a bungalow on Prabhat Road have chosen to preserve a slice of the city’s history.
For 100 years, a bungalow on a corner plot at Pune’s Prabhat Road, close to Fergusson College Road, has secretly preserved an architectural style ahead of its time. Looming amid old mango trees, it is made of the dark grey basalt that is common to the region but, on the doors and below the windows, one can spot artwork on cement, the exciting new building material of the 1900s. This is a home that has flirted with processes, patterns and experiments as it came up.
Generations of art and architecture students have spent mornings on the roads opposite, capturing the house on paper, and marvelling at the cathedral-like slope of the roof with wooden parts, a round attic window and a finial that fits on top of the polygonal design of the house.
At present, the house is festooned with scaffolding but, for once, this does not mean that the place is being torn down to make way for a modern structure of gleaming glass. The owners of the house, who do not wish to be named, are defying the trend by investing in the conservation of their home and a slice of Pune’s history.
A different era
“When Pune used to be a pensioner’s paradise, bungalows were the norm in Deccan. Built by affluent families, these had a similar colonial style, with balconies, trellises, high ceilings and a sort of ventilation that kept the interiors pleasant even during the dry and hot weather. The stonework on the walls would either be completely straight and cut into cuboids or rough,” says Prerna Shetty, founder of Pune-based heritage consultancy firm, Studio Gestalt, which is working on the house.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the homes coming up in the city exhibited a hybrid style in which the core was made of rock but the rest of the construction was of Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC). In the 1980s, multi-storeyed buildings began to make their presence felt in Pune and the last wave of bungalow building ended in the 1990s.
The changing cityscape also reflected the shifting demographic. “Around the 1980s and 1990s, the children of the people who had built these bungalows started going abroad to study, work or live there. The owners do not have as much use for all the space in a bungalow. They need a couple of attendants and some helpers in their old age. Their grandkids are not going to come back anytime soon. The elderly owners also needed to be able to pack up their stuff and leave if they want to go to visit their families abroad,” says Shreeamey Phadnis, the other founder of Studio Gestalt.
Across Pune, builders began to tear down old bungalows. “There are still a few older people with beautiful big bungalows, but it is so hard for them to maintain. We can see that they do not want to let go of their bungalows, but it is becoming more and more impractical for them,” says Phadnis. Many of the homes had signature elements, such as a fountain, a temple or an idol, which disappear when they make way for high-rise buildings. Walk down many lanes of Prabhat Road and Bhandarkar Road, once home to charming bungalows, and one can see commercial outlets stacked above one another.
Home for a builder family
The house was built by a builder from Mumbai for his grandchildren, who were studying in Pune. “A British architect was in charge of the house, and they built it according to the British way of living. At the time, many traditional homes in Maharashtra would have one room leading into another or a verandah going around the rooms so there was little privacy. Here, there are eight bedrooms on two floors but each has a separate door that opens into the verandah,” says one of the owners. She adds that, in the past, there was a single washroom located away from the bedrooms and shared by everybody. “We lived like that as children but, over the years, the design has been changed so that bedrooms have attached bathrooms now,” she adds.
Original stained glass, etched panes, grand wooden balustrades and long doors transport one to an older, quieter world. The living room once boasted a chandelier but now, there is a more modern black brass light arrangement. The house has seen births, weddings, arrivals, departures, and deaths. Interestingly, a narrow gate of iron grills opens into the expansive house, while the family car gets a larger gate. “If you are sitting outside on the balcony, it is pleasant if there is no traffic,” says the owner.
“With older houses, the good thing is that they are made of robust material so chances are low for seepage to get into the bone of the structure, which is the trouble with modern constructions,” says Shetty. The younger generation, who will inherit this property, lives in other countries. “We asked our kids what to do with the house and they said, ‘Can you build another house like this again?’ An old house needs some loving care from time to time. That is why we decided to preserve this house,” says the owner.