Restoration of India’s only French-medium girls high school nearing completion in Puducherry

After facing overmuch delays, the restoration and redevelopment of the decades-old Pensionnat De Jeunes Filles which is India’s lone French-medium girls precocious school, tally by the Puducherry government, is nearing completion.

Located connected the Beach Road, the instauration chromatic for the the reconstruction of the schoolhouse was laid successful February 2023. The enactment was expected to beryllium completed successful March 2025.

However, the task faced repeated delays and the Puducherry Smart City Development Limited (PSCDL) terminated the enactment bid issued to the contractor. It, instead, issued a caller bid to NBCC (India) Ltd., a Central authorities undertaking to implicit the enactment by August 2024. The PSCDL has planned to implicit the enactment by adjacent period (December 2025).

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) is the architectural advisor for PSCDL, portion Puducherry Technological University (PTU) is the structural consultant. The enactment costs ₹7.5 crore.

According to an official, “When the restoration enactment began, the thought was to clasp the practice worth of the building. The operation was restored based connected the methods, techniques and materials chiefly utilized successful its archetypal construction. The damaged portions of the madras tile roofing was removed and relaid successful the aforesaid signifier with lime mortar. About 85% of the enactment has been completed. and the gathering volition beryllium handed implicit to the Department of Education soon.”

The two-storey French architecture-styled building, which remained successful a precarious condition, was provisionally unopen down on with 2 different authorities schools that functioned retired of practice buildings successful 2014, aft the illness of the 144-year-old Marie (Town Hall) gathering connected the Beach Promenade.

In the 1980s, the schoolhouse faced a antithetic a benignant of information erstwhile determination was a connection to demolish it to make abstraction for a authorities building. There were protests, and parents and teachers submitted a petition to the authorities to sphere the structure. The past Lt. Governor, T.P. Tiwari, passed an bid successful 1984 to prevention the schoolhouse from being razed.

Historical significance

The people IIA practice gathering is constructed successful the French architectural style, with a colonnaded portico, a teak staircase, and a wooden-louvered shutter.

The Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles was the Bedier location earlier the Second French Empire. In 1858, it was rented retired and past sold to the colony to location a schoolhouse for European girls. Classes were taught by the nuns of a Catholic order. The tract was chosen connected the sea-side for sanitary and wellness reasons, according to Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.

The gathering was donated by Smith family, who wished for the gathering to beryllium utilized arsenic a schoolhouse for girls. Today, it is the lone French-medium schoolhouse for girls successful the country. After it was closed successful 2014, the students were shifted to different schoolhouse connected Mission Street.