Stop commercial overrun of grand old Gandhi Nagar

Large residential colonies began to emerge south of the Adyar river from the mid-1940s, around the time India got its freedom from British rule. The first among these colonies was Gandhi Nagar, named after Mahatma Gandhi and situated immediately to the south of the river, opposite the Theosophical Society. Years later, more residential localities like Indira Nagar, Nehru Nagar, Shastri Nagar and Besant Nagar, all named after leading freedom fighters, emerged further south.

Bound by the Cancer Hospital in the west, the Adyar river in the north, the Adyar Bridge Road in the east and the Sardar Patel Road in the south, Gandhi Nagar is indeed a unique area that mirrors the evolution of middle-class urban neighbourhoods in the twentieth century. It enjoys the distinction of being the first planned residential colony in this part of the city. Like Manhattan in New York, Gandhi Nagar was laid on the grid pattern, with four main roads, parallel to each other, and intersected by cross roads, again parallel to each other, with the roads joining each other at right angles. The colony’s Fourth Main Road has recently been renamed as Ramachandra Adithanar Salai after the former Editor of the Tamil newspaper, Malai Murasu. He was a resident of this road for many years.

Most of the initial occupants of Gandhi Nagar were bureaucrats, lawyers and journalists. The houses were of three different sizes. Each house had its own garden. Some houses were single-storeyed while others were ground floor plus one floor, no house being higher than that.

For decades, the tiny ‘Iyer Kadai’, off Fourth Main Road, was Gandhi Nagar’s sole neighbourhood grocery store, where one could procure anything from rice and sugar to pencils and notebooks. The Gandhi Nagar Club, again on Fourth Main Road, is one of the first clubs to be started within a residential colony. One of the first schools in the colony was Bala Brindavan that has now evolved as the Bala Vidya Mandir.

Till the early 1980s, Gandhi Nagar was a quiet, tree-studded residential neighbourhood. The area’s few commercial institutions were confined to certain stretches of the First Main Road overlooking the Sardar Patel Road. A sweet shop, started in 1982, within a bungalow on Second Main Road, was one of the first major commercial establishments in interior Gandhi Nagar. Soon, several restaurants, grocery stores, banks and clinics sprang up all over the area. Simultaneously, the big bungalows were demolished to be replaced by multi-storeyed flats. Presently, very few of the bungalows exist. Several long-time residents of the area have repeatedly expressed their fear that in the next few years, Gandhi Nagar may end up as a crammed cluster of residential-cum-commercial apartments. The interior roads of the area are not broad enough for the vehicular traffic due to the ever-increasing commercial units. Hence, there is an urgent need to regulate the growth of commercial activities to preserve the residential character of this unique heritage-rich area.