Audio Guided Tour Through Dalhousie or BBD Bagh Area, Kolkata

The entrance of the Curzon Park with the Governor’s House to your back. It commands a good view of both the stately Raj

Bhavan and the splendid Esplanade Mansion.

It is difficult to believe that the rundown park used

to be covered with flower beds till the 1940’s.

Earlier, it was all water. Dharamtalla Tank, the water

body that used to exist here, was on its north-east

corner and it covered one-fourth of what is now the park

It belongs to the Life Insurance Corporation of India

or LIC now, but it was constructed in 1910 by the

Jewish tycoon, David Ezra. A giant neon sign LIC

logo of the folded hands protecting a flame is

installed on the terrace. The LIC is one of India’s

richest landlords. According to a large signboard on

the building’s ground floor wall, its address is 14/16

Government Place (East). The ground floor is

occupied by the Eastern Railways. It has three

blocks with eight flats in each. The flats command a

great view of the Maidan. All the 999 windows

catch the south breeze. South facing flats are at a

premium in Kolkata.

Raj Bhavan is the official residence of the Governor of West Bengal, located in the capital city Kolkata.. The 27 acres enclosed

by an ornamental wall are screened by tall trees and

bamboo groves. But in the 19th century up to 1870,

no trees were in sight. Its vastness can be guessed

from the remark of one of its residents, Lady

Dufferin. When asked where meals were cooked in

Government House, she remarked: “Somewhere in

Calcutta”. It was the first palace of the “City of

Palaces” as Calcutta was known then.

Several buildings had to be demolished before there

was adequate space for the construction of Raj

Bhavan or as the British called it, Government

House.

The Great Eastern Hotel started operating from these

premises circa 1841, when it was known as

Auckland Hotel. The name of the hotel has changed

several times. Spence’s Hotel owned by John

Spence that overlooked the Raj Bhavan’s north

entrance was built before 1830. It is a newspaper

office now. In the beginning, an Englishman named

David Wilson, who owned a confectionery shop in

what is now Bentinck Street, started Auckland Hotel

with 100 rooms at its current address and named it

after Lord Auckland, then governor general. But it

was better known as Wilson’s Hotel and it was run

by a partnership firm named D. Wilson and

Company. In 1865, the hotel was floated as a

company dubbed the Great Eastern Hotel Wine and

General Purveying Company. An eminent Indian,

the writer Tek Chand Thakur, whose real name was

Peary Chand Mitter, was inducted into its board of

directors and W.C. Bonerjee, the first Indian

president of the Indian National Congress, better

known as the Congress party today, became its

shareholder.

Till the advent of wristwatches, C&K remained the most coveted name in master-crafted timepieces in British India. Founded by Robert Thomas Cooke and Charles Kelvey in Calcutta (now Kolkata), in 1858, C&K was frequented and desired by many in British India. Their status as watchmakers was a puller.

It originally

belonged to the Standard Life Assurance Company

at 32 and 32A BBD Bag.

After decades of neglect the 118-year-old building

was saved from disaster when repairs began in early

2014. The exposed brick building was painted a

dark shade of red with touches of cream.

The building was designed under the supervision of

Frederick William Stevens, consulting architect to

the insurance company, who had also designed the

Victoria Terminus railway station in Mumbai, which

has been renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj

Terminus.

The construction of this building began in 1894 and

it was completed in 1896. Stevens, who died in

Mumbai of malaria, was a high priest of the Indian

Gothic style, but there is no trace of that in Standard

Building. Instead it flaunts some of the most

beautiful relief sculpture anywhere.

Standing at the corner of Red Cross Place and facing

Raj Bhavan, Standard Building is noticeable because

of the cupola or dome on the terrace and the weather

vane topping it. As its two addresses suggest, the

three-storeyed building has two wings joined by two

bridges across a small lane called the Vansittart

Row.

The gigantic and beautiful architecture was constructed between 1882 to 1884 during the tenure of Lord Ripon who was the Governor General of the British India. E J Martin was the architect and the Executive Engineer C J Mills was in charge of the entire construction. The red brick structure was built on a classical quadrangular plane. It has tall windows with beautiful arches, matching sets of Corinthian pillars and railed roofs with pair of phoenixes at intervals. Originally it was meant to accommodate the offices of the finance department of the British India. Now it housed the main office of the Principal Accountant General (audit & accounts), Government of West Bengal. The decorative tablets, arching gateways and beautiful mansards at each end of the long cloisters running along quadrangles making it gracefully gorgeous.

The

church was built on ground gifted by Raja

Nabakrishna Deb of Shobhabazar to Warren

Hastings and the church committee. The Raja

“conveyed” the Old Powder Magazine Yard to

Hastings for sicca rupees 10,000. Hastings laid the

foundation on April 6, 1784, and it was ready in

three years. Sir John Shore commented: “A pagan

gave the ground: all characters subscribed: lotteries,

confiscations, donations received contrary to law

were employed in completing it. The Company

contributed but little: no great proof they think the

morals of their servants connected with religion.”

Sounds very similar to the drives to collect

subscriptions for Durga puja. But for St Paul’s

Cathedral on Chowringhee that was consecrated in

1874, it would have been the main place of worship

for Protestant Anglicans.

The church was designed by Lieutenant James Agg

and was modelled on St Martin-in-the-Fields of

London

After you reached the HSBC builbing. You need to

cross the road to your left and reach the other

side of the road where you will find tram tracks.

That is the Laldighi side of Dalhousie and this is

where the tram services terminate.

The Royal Insurance Company

Building was surely designed to give its clients the

feeling that their money was in safe hands. The

building stands cheek-and-jowl with the white Shaw

Wallace building behind it. The name of the

company is carved with a flourish on its stone face

above the entrance at the crossing of BabuTarapada

Mukherjee Sarani as the more evocative Koilaghat

Street is known today. Koilaghat as most people still

call the street is a corruption of KillaGhat or Fort

Wharf as it once ran along the southern side of the

killa or old fort.

Walter B. Granville, architect to the Government of

India, who had designed the Indian Museum on

Chowringhee, St James’ Church and the Calcutta

High Court building, had also planned the grand

GPO building. The two-storeyed structure is fronted

by rows of Corinthian columns that form graceful

arcs facing BBD Bag and Koilaghat Streetor

BabuTarapada Mukherjee Sarani. It is difficult to get

used to the new name. A grand flight of stairs on

both sides leads to the high central hall.

When the GPO was being constructed, the

foundations of the Old Fort had survived at the

Koilaghat Street corner. The masonry was rock hard.

It had to be blasted.

Road, the

red, two-storied building of the Calcutta

Collectorate constructed in 1892. After the East

India Company took charge of the three villages,

Sutanuti, Kolkata and Gobindapur, that formed the

nucleus of Calcutta in 1700, Ralph Sheldon was

appointed the first collector or zamindar of the East

India Company, who was given arbitrary powers. He

was also in charge of the police force. Among his

duties were collection of taxes, construction of roads

and keeping drains clean. Nandaram, Jagat Das,

Ram Bhadra and GobindaramMitter, who had built

the Chitpur Black pagoda remnants of which still

survive, succeeded each other as his assistants.

John Zephaniah Holwell, a Black Hole survivor after

whom the monument was named, was a zamindar

and he sacked both Nandaram and Gobindaram for

heavy frauds. Gobindaram himself wielded much

power, and he won back his position as he paid back

the sum he had embezzled. Who says there was no

corruption during the Raj? Perhaps it is difficult to

keep track of the scale of corruption today, but let us

not pretend it never existed earlier.

The Writers’ Building that is

formally known as Mahakaran and is popularly

dubbed Lalbari or red house because of its colour. The Writers’ Building was not always red, and all

those grand neo-classical features were added on

over the years from late 18th century, when it was

constructed. It was not the seat of power either in the

beginning.

It is now being “restored” by the public works

department.

The church’s foundation was laid by the Governor-

General, Marquis of Wellesley, in 1815 at the

initiative of Rev James Bryce. It was constructed by

Burn Currie & Co, and thanks to its high plinth,

rising damp was never a problem. It was the first

church in the city to be air-conditioned in the 1950s,

and this saved it from pollution. Air pollution is

deadly here.

The portico facing Laldighi has a triangular

pediment, and the one at the rear meant for carriages

in the past is used to park cars. It is shaded

by wooden jalis. Even in the 1950s the Scots used to

come here for Scottish country dances but by the

1960s they were all gone.

On the other side of the church is the handsome

Tobacco House once owned by the family of B.N.

Elias, a Jewish industrialist.

The Currency Building is a rare example of the

Italian style of architecture in Calcutta. It is a

massive and handsome corner building that was

once floored up to the third storey with Italian

marble. It has a symmetrical facade, nine bays wide,

and a central portico spanning three bays.

The portico ornamented with florid cast iron pillars

and rails emphasises its grandeur. One enters it

through a giant wrought iron gate of ornate design.

The gate was made by Harris & Gibbs of Bristol,

England. Its name is emblazoned on it. Constructed

in 1868, it originally housed the Agra and

Masterman’s Bank.