Dhaka, Aug. 4 -- For nearly 140 years, Dhaka Club's historic Main Lounge has stood as one of the capital's most recognisable social landmarks, a building tied closely to the city's institutional, civic and social memory.

But beyond the structure's heritage value, growing safety concerns now raise a difficult question: how long can preservation wait when visible structural distress has already been documented?

A preliminary visual structural condition assessment of the club's Main Lounge Building and Bar Area has identified corrosion of steel members, cracks in slabs and beams, cracks in load-bearing walls, moisture intrusion, column irregularities and signs of possible past alterations.

The assessment carried out by an expert team appo...