After 3 years, Rs 3.7 crore, Flora Fountain to run for 12 hours

The fountain will remain functional between 9 am and 9 pm for the first few days. Pics/Ashish Raje

The iconic Flora Fountain is back in action following three years of restoration work. The fountain will now function in all its glory between 9 am and 9 pm every day initially, as civic officials are yet to finalise the timings. The Grade-I heritage structure in the Fort area of south Mumbai was unveiled on Thursday by Mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar.

Restoration of Flora Fountain was planned to be undertaken in two phases with work beginning in 2016. The project was headed by heritage conservation architect Vikas Dilawari whose draft plan for repairs and renovation was approved in 2011. However, engineering that dates back to the British era, has proved resolving issues quite challenging for the restoration team. Phase II of restoration includes work on the surroundings and landscaping.

There are some minor glitches with the fountain though. While the civic body has fixed some leakages they had noticed earlier, it is now trying to fix the remaining ones. The BMC has had to provide water tankers to the fountain every three to four days for additional water supply for the last couple of weeks. This comes at a time when the city is already facing a water shortage.

Civic officials said that they have been testing the fountain for the past 20 days to detect the any leakages. "While some water is lost due to evaporation, we were noticing an additional drop in the water level of the troughs. The fountain thus needed a water tanker (carrying 10,000 litres of water) every three to four days. But the leakages detected in the first two rounds of testing have been repaired now," said a civic official, requesting anonymity, but "Civic officials will continue to monitor the fountain," said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant municipal commissioner of A ward. The fountain requires 40,000 litres of water to function at any given point, the official added.

Dust plays spoilsport
A day before its inaugural, a lot of dust was noticed in the fountain water. "We tried to arrange for a filter to clean the water and put it back in the troughs but weren't able to do so. So we had to replace all the water using tankers between 2 am and 7 am," said the official.

Rs 3.7cr
Spent on restoring the Flora Fountain

3 years
Time taken for the restoration

The Roman goddess fountain
Inaugurated in 1869, the Flora Fountain is a fusion of water, architecture and sculpture made of Portland stone and was dedicated to Governor Bartle Frere. The three-tiered fountain was commissioned by the Agri-Horticultural Society of Western India and was built by the Esplanade Fee Fund Committee at a total cost of R47,000, with a donation of R20,500 by Seth Cursetjee Furdonjee Parekh.

The design was prepared by R Norman Shaw and the fountain was sculpted in imported Portland stone by one of British sculptor James Forsythe. Placed at the square on November 18, 1869, it was initially called Frere Fountain as an homage to Sir Bartle's farsighted town planning. Eventually, it adopted the name Flora, after the Roman deity of flowers. At the turn of the 20th century, a circular garden was built to enclose the fountain. It was widened to become a parking lot, in the 1950s.

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