152-year-old Fitzgerald Fountain springs back to life after 6 decades
Almost 60 years since Fitzgerald Fountain was last functional, the 152year-old monument sprang back to life last Friday, after a year of restoration work.
The fountain, which had six heads that spout water into their respective troughs, now has one head spouting water, after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) heritage department re-engineered its hydraulics system. The remaining heads will be restored within a week. Work on the fountain is still underway at the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan in Byculla.
Cast in wrought iron, the 16-tonne monument was originally installed at the Metro Cinema Junction in south Mumbai in 1867 by the Esplanade Committee, in honour of Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, the governor of Bombay from 1867 to 1872.
In 1960, the fountain was pulled down from the Metro Cinema Junction during the Samyukta Maharashtra Chaval, as it bore the Royal Coat of Arms, representing the British monarch, a reminder of the British rule in India. It was moved to the Byculla zoo, and assembled haphazardly. Many of its parts were misplaced or lost, and it lay neglected for 60 years. Last September, the BMC began to restore it.
Deepak Paunikar, a renowned sculptor who is working with BMC on the restoration project, said, “All the pipes that made the fountain functional were missing or lost through the years. We had to re-imagine the engineering and install it again.”
During the course of restoration, the BMC dismantled the entire fountain to clean and restore pieces separately.