They burnt midnight oil to make City Beautiful a reality

Tribune News Service

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Chandigarh, October 6

It was in 1949, the idea of Chandigarh was born when the Government of India took the decision to create a new capital city for the state of Punjab that lost its capital, Lahore, to Pakistan. In 1950, the government began the process of acquiring land for the new city.

Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, who was keen on seeing a modern city being carved out, engaged an American town planner to work on the first Master Plan for Chandigarh. Albert Mayer first associated with Polish-born American architect Matthew Novicki, who later died in an airplane crash 1950.

After some time, Le Corbusier was asked to develop the plan of Albert Mayer. Le Corbusier was employed for the Master Plan and the capital buildings and worked from 1951 until his death in 1965 on the construction of the city. Pierre Jeanneret, his cousin and partner, was hired as the site architect. Maxwell Fry and Jane B Drew worked for about three years on the project and then left due to their engagements elsewhere.

In 1965 MN Sharma took over from Pierre Jeanneret as the first Indian Chief Architect of the project and after the reorganisation of the State of Punjab in 1966 and the establishment of Union Territory, Chandigarh, he was appointed as the Administrative Secretary of the Department of Architecture in the Chandigarh Administration.

On April 2, 1952, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru after inaugurating the construction of the city, inspected the layout plan from a specially erected 36-foot-high tower in Sector 9 from where he had a bird's eye-view of the site selected for Chandigarh.Later, the construction of the city was formally inaugurated on October 7, 1953, by India's first President Dr Rajendra Prasad. At the time of the inauguration, Corbusier said, "A town is a mighty image that stirs our minds. Why should not the town be even today a source of poetry".

In his famous speech at Rajendra Park in Chandigarh on November 9, 1957, Nehru shared his vision of the city and said, "It was felt that to build a new city to be the capital of Punjab, it would give people something new to look forward to. We wanted them to look to the future with new hope after the trauma they had been through. We felt the new capital would be a symbol of new hope."

Going down memory lane

As the city observes the 50th death anniversary of Le Corbusier, Chandigarh Tribune goes down memory lane to recall interesting facts about the making of the city and contribution of various persons, including great French architect Le Corbusier, who worked overtime to realise Pt Jawaharlal Nehru's dream to create a modern capital city for the state of Punjab, that had lost its traditional capital of Lahore to Pakistan. The city is already organising a series of events to commemorate the great French architect, Le Corbusier.