Indian arm of Luxembourg-based firm buys Art Deco villa in S’crz for ₹86.51cr
The transaction between Picard Angst India directors and six legal heirs of Rozario family entails purchase of 11,395 sq ft of land and 4,005 sq ft of the built-up area of the bungalow along with two garages. The deal was registered on March 2, and the purchasers paid a stamp duty of ₹5.19 crore, according to documents accessed by IndexTap.com
Mumbai: Felstead Villa, a 75-year-old ancestral bungalow with marked Art Deco features, located at a prime location in Santacruz West has been purchased by Picard Angst India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of a Luxembourg-based real estate investment company, from the legal heirs of the property for a sum of ₹86.51 crore.
Art Deco is a style of architecture, visual arts and design that first appeared in France in the 1910s and flourished in the next three to four decades.
The transaction between Picard Angst India directors and six legal heirs of Rozario family entails purchase of 11,395 sq ft of land and 4,005 sq ft of the built-up area of the bungalow along with two garages. The deal was registered on March 2, and the purchasers paid a stamp duty of ₹5.19 crore, according to documents accessed by IndexTap.com
All of the legal heirs are based abroad, and one of the sellers Francis Andrew Rozario is the founder and CEO of Singapore-based private equity investment firm, Asia Capital and Advisors.
Picard Angst India is a 100% subsidiary of Luxembourg REO Company SARL, a Luxembourg-based real estate investment company. Based in Delhi, it was set up in 2019 for undertaking construction activities within the real estate sector.
Industry sources say the company is likely to build a premium residential development. Oberoi Realty’s Priviera luxury tower with one apartment per floor is located opposite the villa
The registration documents reveal that the land parcel was owned by Manekji Hormuaji Gazdar prior to 1936 and is located in Gazdar Private Scheme. In August 1936, the land was purchased by Daisy Louisa Rozario, who after receiving the sanad in 1948, built the Felstead Villa. She bequeathed the property to her son Collin Rozario whose son Francis Andrew Rozario 69, and other family members are based in Canada, Australia, the US, the UK.
The Felstead Villa also features in the digital repository of Art Deco Mumbai, a non-profit organisation that documents city buildings with Art Deco features, chronicles its history and advocates its conservation. The villa was documented by its team on February 2, 2022 and added it to their digital archive.
Asked what features in the bungalow make it an Art Deco building, Suhasini Krishnan, head, Outreach & Content, Art Deco Mumbai said, “The streamlined form, continuous eyebrows, banding on the staircase shaft, the geometric patterns on the grilles of the windows, balconies and compound wall. There is also a prominent frieze of geometric wave-like patterns on the roof parapet.”
A note of the detailed inspection of the bungalow observed that “two contrasting colors are present in the structure in order to highlight the eyebrows in a darker shade, a typical Deco architectural feature.” It also noted “The curved form of the terrace parapet wall is decorated with a sequence of stylized teardrop patterns strewn together to evoke an onslaught of waves or a lengthy vine.”
Asked if Art Deco buildings like Felstead Villa should be conserved, Krishnan said “Yes. It is not just about the built form and its tangibles, but we think equal, if not greater attention, should be paid to the historical significance of these structures, the vision they reflected for Bombay as a modern city, and the quality of life they gave to the city’s residents.”
The Art Deco style was dominant in the buildings created between 1930s to 1950s. Art Deco Mumbai has identified 972 Art Deco buildings in the city, and surveyed nearly 2,400 till March this year, she said.
