Saturday, May 17, 2008

Do you have the time?

How many clock towers does Chennai have? The question popped up when I was travelling past the Royapettah clock tower a couple of days ago. I had my camera with me, so I just had to take this picture, but the question remains. How many clock towers?

I can think of others at Vepery, Mint, Triplicane (and there was one in Tambaram that was brought down to make space for the National Highway) - apart from the ones on buildings such as P.Orr or the Chennai Central station. I guess I'll try and run a (fragmented) series of the clock towers :)

I'm sure there is some history behind the building of these clock towers; yes, the utilitarian value of telling time must have been the primary purpose, but who decided that the populace of the city needs to keep track of time? Will also pick up some information and link to this post - later!



4 comments:

Viswanathan said...

There is one or is it was, at the Kathipara junction.

Good question about why or who decided that the general populace need to know the time.

I speculate that it must have been the British, who introduced this for obvious reasons.

Will love to hear the facts.

Shantaram said...

>>ottayan >> Was looking through the references I have about Chennai architechture, heritage buildings, etc. - none of them seems to have paid much attention to the clock towers!

The facts need to be dug out!!

Anonymous said...

hi shantaram, the clock towers look like a good story that we could follow up on. Suresh

Shantaram said...

>>suresh >> Sounds good... what do I need to do? Will call you!