Kardyl Building - Mount Road

The Bharat Building's story goes back to 1868 when W.E. Smith, a pharmacist, arrived in Madras and, finding enough pharmacies and more in business in the city, proceeded to Ooty where he set up shop. The success of the Ooty pharmacy and other branches in the Blue Mountains made Smith decide not only to look at Madras again but also set up a shop the city would not forget. On the site that became Bharat Insurance's, he set up facilities that enabled W.E. Smith's to describe itself as "wholesale and manufacturing druggists... opticians, dealers in surgical instruments... and makers of aerated waters." 

When business grew, Smith's wanted not only more built-space but also a building in keeping with the image it had gained, as South India's leading pharmacists. And so work began in 1894, on a building that was to be inaugurated in 1897 as Kardyl Building, headquarters of the firm that now described itself as "W.E. Smith & Co Ltd."

A triangular building with its peak flattened, Kardyl Building was designed by J.H. Stephens of the Madras P.W.D. and he let his vision of Indo-Saracenic architecture run riot in it. Domes, spires, 100-foot minarets, arches and verandahs blended the Mughal with the Ottoman, the Hindu and the European Classical in a fantasy that at its inauguration was described as "a palatial structure... ten times the size of what was occupied originally... one of the sights of the city... a far greater show than any other building on Mount Road." Within, its main feature was a magnificent 60-foot by 40 showroom. 

It also provided rooms for doctors and dentists on its first floor facing Mount Road, and for its European assistants facing General Patter's Road. It even ran a café and a beer bar! And in its rear compound was its aerated water factory.