6 Things You Don't Know About Calcutta's Victoria Memorial

The Victoria Memorial of Calcutta (Kolkata), officially The All India Victoria Memorial Hall, is the city’s number one tourist attraction. In his book “Calcutta’s Edifice: The Buildings of a Great City”, Brian Paul Bach writes, “Probably no other structure is currently called upon as often to serve as a symbol of Calcutta.” Victoria Memorial attracts tourists by the thousand every day and yet, there is much about the monument that even Calcuttans are unaware of. Here are 6 things about the Victoria Memorial that most people don’t know…

 

Martin & Co., Clive Street

There is a red building that stands sandwiched between Gillander House and Coal Bhavan on Clive Street (now Netaji Subhash Road). One look at the building and you’ll know that the top two floors were added on much later. While the bottom three floors are ornamented the top two are bland and uninspiring. Get closer to it and you will find a door with a most striking design. I am no architect so I can only guess that the correct word to describe the projection all around the door would be a canopy; an arched canopy to be exact. It is painted in the red and yellow shade of the building and has quite a bit of ornamentation inside. The door itself is fancy looking, made of wood with glass panes with cast iron grilles on top. The old, dirty, cracked wooden boards on its right side contain the names of the many offices which occupy the building, but there is nothing to identify what the building once was. This was the original office of one of Calcutta’s most important and powerful engineering firms; Martin & Co.

Martin & Co. building today

Hong Kong House, Dalhousie Square South

Photographers, who place a subject off-centre in a photograph, will often attempt to balance the frame with something else on the other side. Something similar happens in Calcutta’s Dalhousie Square. The entire Northern side is dominated by one single building, Writers’. It is the supreme, the ultimate of Calcutta’s heritage buildings, perhaps challenged only in importance by the Victoria Memorial. The Southern side, says author Brian Paul Bach, in his book Calcutta’s Edifice: The Buildings of a Great City, forms an impressive “jawaab”, so to speak. Dalhousie Square South contains four or three buildings, depending on how you count. There is the CTO complex, which may be counted as one, or as two separate buildings, one older, and one newer. There is the Standard Life Assurance Building, which is one of the most flamboyant buildings in the area. And finally, there is Hong Kong House.

Hong Kong House

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, Clive Street

Of all the heritage buildings in Calcutta’s Dalhousie Square area, three are banks. There is the old Alliance Bank of Simla, which failed and got taken over by the Imperial Bank, which later became The Reserve Bank of India. There is Hong Kong House, headquarters of The Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, and there is the magnificent building of The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. I refuse to consider the Reserve Bank of India’s depressingly Stalinist looking headquarters a heritage building. The Chartered Bank Building is located at the corner of Clive Street (now N.S. Road) and Royal Exchange Place (now India Exchange Place). With its byzantine theme, and distinctive red and white stripes, it is one of the more easily spotted buildings in the area.

Esplanade Mansions

Built in 1910 by Sir Rajen Mukherjee’s firm, Martin and Co., for Calcutta’s Jewish real estate magnate, David Joseph Ezra, Esplanade Mansions is probably the only art nouveau building in all of India. It is located at the crossing of Esplanade Row East and Govt. Place East, opposite the Eastern gate of the magnificent Government House (Raj Bhavan). It is currently owned by the Life Insurance Corporation of India, which owns a number of heritage structures all over Calcutta, and has been, happily, restoring them.

The building originally contained some 24 flats, which were much sought after as they offered a view of Government House’s beautiful wooded gardens. It currently houses the offices of the Chief Public Relations Officer of the Eastern Railways, the Railway Claims Tribunal, the Vice Chairman & Member Technical’s offices, along with offices and rest houses of LIC. Several of the flats remain residential. Ex Indian cricketer, Arun Laal had a flat here.

For many years the neglected building was an obnoxious shade of pink. The recent restoration has left it dazzling white and spotless.