The Hindu Higher Secondary School (HHSS), located on Big Street,

Triplicane Triplicane, known in the vernacular as Thiruvallikeni, is one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Chennai, India. It is situated on the Bay of Bengal coast and about from Fort St George. The average elevation of the neighbourhood is 14 metres ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, is one of the oldest

secondary schools A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territo ...

, having been established in 1852. The school was founded at a time when many parents were reluctant to send their children to schools managed and run by the British, in this case, the English

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

History

The schools roots are in two boys' schools in the

area of

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, the Dravida Pathasala (Pathasala means school in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

) for

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

boys and the Hindu Balura Pathsala for

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

boys. In 1860, these two Pathsalas were merged, the new entity being named the "Triplicane Andhra Dravida Balura Pathasala". The school was later again renamed "The Triplicane Anglo-Vernacular High School". Finally, in 1897, the school's name was changed to "Hindu High School".

The building

Construction of a large school building was completed in 1897, the L-shaped red brick building having been designed by the architect

Henry Irwin Henry Irwin (24 January 1841 – 5 August 1922) was an architect of British India. He is mainly known for his works in Indo-Saracenic style of architecture. He was a member of the Institution of Engineers. He was awarded a CIE in the 1888 B ...

. The three-storey building was constructed by Namberumal Chetty, on a plot of . Wide and broad verandas and big windows ensured proper ventilation, while high ceilings and rows of arches imparted an imposing look to the school building. With additional construction done over a period of time, the building is now T-shaped.

Notable alumni

* G. N. Balasubramaniam, Carnatic

vocalist Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; ) (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian-American theoretical physicist who spent his professional life in the United States. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for "... ...

, Nobel Prize–winning astrophysicist. *

Kamal Haasan Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali l ...

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

and

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

S. V. Ranga Rao Samarla Venkata Ranga Rao (3 July 1918 – 18 July 1974), popularly known as SVR, was an Indian actor, producer, and director known for his works majorly in Telugu and Tamil films. He is regarded as one of the finest actors in the history of ...

and

References

External links

Hindu Higher Secondary School
{{Education in Tamil Nadu Boys' schools in India High schools and secondary schools in Chennai Educational institutions established in 1852 1852 establishments in India