More questions than answers about Chennai’s own ‘Red Fort’

Last Sunday saw the Madras Red Fort Doctors Foundation meet online. This is a group of alumni of the Madras Medical College and the Red Fort, the name they chose for themselves, indicates their love for the old Anatomy Block of their alma mater. This red-brick structure, which is best viewed from the Sir T. Muthuswami Iyer Bridge, has been known among MMC students for long as the Red Fort.

While the purpose of the meeting was to pay homage to M.M. Cooper, for many years the professor of Anatomy at the MMC, I was asked to say a few words by way of introduction, about the history of the anatomy block itself. And having accepted the invite and then begun my search for information, I found I came away with more questions than answers.

By far the most cogent account of the way the MMC buildings developed is in an article dated November 26, 1904, written by Nicholas Senn, MD, Chicago, for the Journal of the American Medical Association. The college began in 1835 and the first lectures were held in rooms adjoining the quarters of the Surgeon General of the General Hospital. The college got its own building a year later and this comprised a library, a museum, a lecture hall that doubled as an operating theatre, and a laboratory. There was a major expansion in 1867. Then in 1883, a separate anatomy block was created with a theatre and a dissecting room. To this, an enlarged museum was added in 1887/88. Senn concludes that “separate buildings for biologic and hygienic laboratories were added”, though he does not say when this was done.

From the above, it is safe to conclude that the anatomy block was in existence by 1883. However, in their book, Madras: The Architectural Heritage, K. Kalpana and Frank Schiffer record the date of construction as 1897. And certainly, some of the architectural features, most notably the crenelations on the roofline and the tiny domes at the corners, show a lot of commonalities with Moore Market, which came up a couple of years later. And so, was it 1885 or 1897? And then, who was the architect? It certainly does not seem to be the work of either R.F. Chisholm or Henry Irwin. Going by its similarities to Moore Market, I would hazard that it was R.E. Ellis, who was in the 1890s Superintending Engineer, Government of Madras. A bust of the man still stands in the garden of the Government Museum, Egmore.

I then came across yet another conundrum. In their book, Kalpana and Schiffer add that the high ceilings of the first floor rest on iron columns which bear the year stamp 1907, which they say “was the probable date of the building”. I find this incompatible both in terms of what is written earlier by the same authors and also in terms of architectural style. No doubt, there must be files in the Tamil Nadu Archives with all the answers, and till some indefatigable researcher pulls them out, we must rest with conjectures.

The alumni are most concerned about their Red Fort. Some grand announcements were made in 2016 on how it was to become a museum, but there has been little action. The functioning departments were transferred to the new multi-storey building on the erstwhile premises of the Central Prison. Red Fort has been left empty. No heritage building likes being abandoned. It is usually the beginning of the end. One more museum is not the answer. The building needs to be put to use functionally to ensure its survival.

(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)