A walk to remember inside iconic Mumbai civic body building – Hindustan Times

Did you know that the area where the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) headquarters exists today at Fort has a connection to India’s First War of Independence in 1857? Or if the BMC headquarters, built in 1893 did not even have the mayor’s office at the time and that the office was designed only three decades after the building was constructed?

If you are unaware of these facts, the BMC’s heritage tour will help you learn more about your city.

The civic body, in a joint venture between the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC), on Saturday commenced heritage walks for citizens. The heritage tour was inaugurated by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday. On Saturday, the civic body conducted the first heritage tour at 4.30pm with 15 citizens through the headquarters, followed by the second tour at 5.30pm. The next two tours are scheduled for Sunday morning.

The heritage walk will be organised every weekend at the civic headquarters. This is the first time that the BMC has opened its doors for tourists through these guided tours.

As a bonus for patrons opting for the tour, the guides also talk about Mumbai local government’s role in shaping the city’s personality, its symbolic representation in the architecture of the building, and the history of the erstwhile Bombay spanning over five centuries since the 1600s.

Khaki Tours is curating the heritage walks. Bharat Gothoskar from Khakhi Tours, said, “The tour is all about the city’s stories. Mumbai as a city starts from a small house built in 1500s. So during the tour, we refer to stories of the city spanning over five centuries, but throw more light on the city’s history from the British era, about three centuries ago.”

Each tour will commence at the selfie point outside the main porch of BMC building, where the guides tell stories about the significance of Pherozeshah Mehta’s statue outside the building porch, and the statue of Bombay – the angel atop the porch named Urbs Prima in Indis (First City of India). The tour will then take patrons through BMC building, halting at the main porch, under the main dome, to the outside the porch overlooking the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) building, inside the general body hall, the mayor’s office, the municipal commissioner’s office, the standing committee hall, and finally up a narrow stone staircase to the dome of the old building.

“Before the BMC building was built, the area roughly in and around this plot was called ‘Faasi Talaav’, where public executions of criminals and freedom fighters used to take place. There is an old photograph of the area in which two soldiers, Mangal Gadia and Sayyed Hussain, who participated in the 1857 War, were executed. They were made to stand before the cannons and shot. Now, there is a memorial opposite the main building outside Azad Maidan, which can be viewed from the main porch as well,” said Gothoskar.

Likewise, the present-day mayor’s office was not part of the original building plans. Mayors used to work from their private chambers. When Vitthal Bhai Patel – the older brother of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel – became the president of the corporation in 1924 (the post was then equivalent to that of the mayor), he demanded that he be given an office at the headquarters, as a representative of the citizens. Thus, the mayor’s chambers were added to the building in 1924.

Each tour will conclude at a museum on the first floor, where photos of the city and the old civic corporation have been put up.

Tourists can book the tours on bookmyshow.com, at a cost of ₹300.