Palace returns to Indian hands
When one of India’s wealthiest families announced it had purchased an oceanfront mansion from the U.S. government for the record price of more than $110 million (U.S.), neighbourhood denizens were pleased.
“It’s a very happy occasion for all of us,” said V.S. Chaubey, 46. “There’s nothing more joyous than getting an esteemed neighbour.”
Chaubey sells cold drinks and snacks from a bright yellow kiosk just steps from the iron gates of the mansion long known as Lincoln House. He and his son sleep above the kiosk, in a 6-by-8-foot alcove that is reached by climbing through a cut-out in the ceiling next to the cigarette display.
Lincoln House’s new owner, pharmaceutical magnate Cyrus Poonawalla, will have considerably more space. The 50,000-square-foot palace, designed by a British colonial architect and set back from the Arabian Sea by a grove of graceful palms on two acres of land, served for more than five decades as the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai, and before that as the home of a minor Indian maharaja.
Poonawalla, ranked by Forbes magazine as India’s ninth-richest person, concluded what local media reported was India’s costliest residential real estate deal, even though he has no plans to live there full time. The family business is based three hours away in the city of Pune. His son, Adar Poonawalla, who spearheaded the purchase, said he spends about every other weekend in Mumbai.
Still, as a pied-à-terre, it seems to suit the family’s lifestyle. The Poonawallas race horses at Mumbai’s Mahalaxmi race course, a short drive away. And they will have plenty of wall space to display their growing collection of paintings, including works by Monet, Picasso and Renoir.
Prospective buyers had been put off by the building’s heritage status, which prevents major renovations. But it took just a half-hour tour for Adar Poonawalla to decide to make an offer at a closed auction this year.
“We always dreamed of having such a property, which is an iconic historical landmark,” the 34-yearold British-educated heir to the Serum Institute, the vaccine manufacturer his father founded, said by phone from Pune. The company is among the world’s largest producers of measles and polio vaccines.
Space is perhaps the most precious commodity in the city formerly known as Bombay, a commercial hub of 12 million people crammed ever more tightly into a sliver of land along India’s western coast.
Even the U.S. government eventually outgrew Lincoln House, which it acquired in 1957 from the royal family of Wankaner, in Gujarat state.
The personal palaces stand in stark contrast with the shanties and slums where nearly half of Mumbai lives. Little separates the rich and poor geographically. Around Lincoln House, in an exclusive area of old-money, sea-facing apartments, fruit sellers and day labourers sleep in a warren of shacks tucked into an alley, out of sight from the main road.
Poonawalla’s new neighbours greeted the news with a mixture of nonchalance and muted admiration.
“Rich people are our main customers,” said Jaffer Sheik, a 65-year-old selling bananas under a tree, then specified that “they send their servants.”