Thrissur: The city corporation has demolished a 150-year-old three-storey building downtown facing Thekkinkkad Maidan and Swaraj Round.
The building owned by the civic body was among 150-odd structures in the city marked for demolition as they were unsafe.
Two rooms on its first and second floors in which mainly chitty firms were functioning had collapsed on Sunday morning, hastening the action. The three-storey structure was about 60-metre long.
The demolition began Sunday evening but halted Monday morning after razing second and first floors.
“It will continue after removing debris and reusable wooden materials. There were 28 firms, and despite several warnings, shopkeepers were reluctant to vaca-te,” district planning committee member and deputy mayor Varghese Kandamkulathy said.
Former mayors protest
Four former Congress mayors came out against the overnight demolition "for laterite bricks and wood," citing its ‘heritage’ value. In a joint statement, Rajan Pallan, I. P. Paul, Jose Kattookaran and K. Radhakrishnan said that before demolishing the building, the LDF-ruled civic body could have sought the advice of structural engineers of Government Engineering College on possibilities of preserving it. “Buildings like that of St Thomas College and Sakthan Fort are as old as this building and were preserved,” they said.
