Officially ‘The Rebala Lakshminarasa Reddy Puramandiram’, but more popularly known as Town Hall was constructed by Rao Bahaddoor Rebala Lakshminarasa Reddy in about two-and-a-half acres at Trunk Road, Nellore in 1915.
The 96-old-town hall complex houses Sri Rebala Pattabhi Ramireddy Reading Room, Jr. Rebala Lakshminarasa Reddy Dining Hall, an auditorium, a mandapam and an open ground, not to forget is the small Vinayaka temple right in the town hall compound.
Town Hall used to be the defacto place in Nellore for arts and cultural programs for years. Town Hall would have hosted thousands of theatre performances, felicitations, poetry recitals, public meetings, muscial nights, school anniversaries. Thousands of couples in Nellore district would fondly remember Town Hall as it was the venue of their marriage.
I remember attending many marriages and theater performances here. Most unforgettable was my own school’s anniversary function.
Town hall was given a face lift in 2003 and now looks like a new bride, thanks to the efforts of the The Town Hall Trust. Padmasri S.P Bala Subhramanyam playback singer, who came for the inaugural function after renovation recalled the number of programmes he staged from the same auditorium right from his childhood and said ‘This is the stage from which I gave my first performance at the age of five as Raghurama in Bhaktha Ramadasu where my father and noted Harikatha exponent S.P.Sambamurthy was Ramadasu,” while addressing the packed town hall on Sep-14-2003, Sunday night.
