Specials

The First Streetlights of Coimbatore

B Meenakshi Sundaram · 16 Jul 2023

In contrast to the scenario now of streetlights burning here and there even after dawn due to the Corporation staff’s apathy in switching them off, many of the streetlights in the city would not burn even for a few hours in the night almost 100 years ago, as they would soon be blown out by the strong gusts of wind!

In the absence of electricity those days, only kerosene lamps were seen hanging on tall lampposts planted along the streets of the city.

The lamps were diligently lit by the municipal workers every evening. During those days, hurricane lamps which were suspended from the chassis of bullock and horse-drawn carts emitted a dull light on the roads when the vehicles kept moving from place to place. The carts were the only mode of conveyance back then. At homes too, there were only chimney and hurricane lamps.

However, paraffin lamps illuminated the streets of the city with their fluorescent white light only during temple festivals, wedding processions, and other such occasions.

They were a rare delight for the commoners as such lamps glowed regularly only at the homes of rich Coimbatoreans.

In what is surely a significant landmark in the city’s development, Samikannu Vincent who was generating his power through two German diesel generators for his cinema Variety Hall, volunteered to offer the excess power for a public purpose and made the ‘Variety Hall Road’ glow with electric streetlights in 1922, ten years even before the government provided power to Coimbatore.

Vincent built his Variety Hall in Coimbatore in 1914 - the first movie hall in South India to exhibit silent movies.

Besides screening silent movies, the cinema also had a commentator who narrated the story sequence to the audience before the scenes unfolded on the screen. Moreover, the movie hall entertained the viewers with a variety of programs like musical performances, magic shows, ballroom dances, and even wrestling matches within the movie’s running time! Hence the name ‘Variety Hall’.

Following the establishment of Variety Hall, Vincent set up many other movie halls in Coimbatore. They were Palace, Light House, Edison, and Radha. These were renamed in due course as Nazz, Kennedy, Swamy, and Murugan respectively. Interestingly, famed Indian English writer R K Narayan mentions these movie halls in his popular novel The Dark Room.

Resigning his boring desk job as a draftsman clerk in the Railways at Tiruchirapalli, Vincent bought a film projector from Du Pont, a French film exhibitor, at a price of Rs 2250 and exhibited films in India. Carrying his film projector, Vincent traveled all across the country and exhibited films after pitching his tents close to the major towns.

When Vincent breathed his last, the day of his death was marked by a storm with hailstones damaging window panes - a rare event believed to occur only at the time when Good Samaritans bid adieu to the world according to Christian belief.

Vincent’s Variety Hall, the first movie hall in South India, still stands as Delite just to ‘delight’ a handful of movie buffs who like to watch their favourite MGR and Sivaji Ganesan starrers even today. However, Delite, which completed its centenary in 2014 seems to shut its doors, and the memories of watching movies there will fade away with time.

Vincent's south india streetlights

The First Streetlights of Coimbatore

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