The Early History of Vivekanandar Illam Revisited

It is the 125th Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s heroic return to India after spreading the message of Vedanta for almost four years in America and England. He reached Chennai on 6 Feb 1897 and stayed for 9 days at Castle Kernan, now known as Vivekanandar Illam or Vivekananda House. This research article throws new light on the history of this monument.

- SWAMI SURARCHITANANDA

The Vivekanandar Illam stands on Kamarajar Salai, Chennai like a sentinel of the past. The building served as a warehouse to store ice and thus came to be popularly known as the Ice House. After acquiring it in 1880, Sri Biligiri Iyengar added circular verandas to the building and converted it into his residential quarters.1 It was in this house that Swami Vivekananda stayed from 6–14 February 1897 on the historic return from his first visit to the West. Soon after that Swamiji’s brother-disciple Swami Ramakrishnananda began the Ramakrishna Movement activities in this building. He lived there from 1897 to 1907 after which he shifted to the newly built Math in Mylapore.

It is commonly believed that this building in Chennai (Madras) was built by Frederic Tudor, ‘the Boston Ice King’ to facilitate his business of importing ice from America to India. He had similar Ice Houses in Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta). But in fact none of these buildings was built by the Tudor Ice Company. It was built by the British community in India by raising subscriptions so that they could have their ‘ice’ — a much sought-after commodity.

Frederic Tudor writes: “They [the British community] made me a subscription and a present of a fine fire proof building – unconditionally and this example was followed nearly in the same way at Madras and Bombay.”