Connaught Place, New Delhi
Connaught Place, also known as Rajiv Chowk or CP, is one of the main financial, commercial and business centres in New Delhi, Delhi, India. It houses the headquarters of several noted Indian firms and is a major shopping, nightlife, and tourist destination in New Delhi. As of July 2018, Connaught Place ranked as the ninth most expensive office location in the world, with an annual rent of $1,650 per square metre.
Connaught Place, considered the principal commercial hub of the new city, holds a place of pride and is recognized as one of the top heritage structures in New Delhi. Developed as a showpiece of Lutyens' Delhi, Connaught Place features a prominent Central Business District. Christened after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, construction work began in 1929 and was completed in 1933. It was designed by Robert Tor Russell. Although Connaught Place was officially renamed in 1995 after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the term "Rajiv Chowk" is seldom used, with locals and officials alike continuing to refer to it as Connaught Place.
An underground Delhi Metro station built beneath Connaught Place is named Rajiv Chowk.
History
In the centuries preceding the construction of Connaught Place, the area encompassing Connaught Place was a ridge, covered with kikar trees and populated with jackals and wild pigs. Residents of Kashmere Gate and Civil Lines paid visits to the area during the weekends for partridge hunting. The Hanuman Temple attracted many visitors from the old walled city, who visited only on Tuesdays and Saturdays and before sunset, as the return trip was considered dangerous.Residents of villages including Madhoganj, Jaisingh Pura and Raja ka Bazaar were evicted to clear the area for the construction of Connaught Place and the development of its nearby areas in the early twentieth century. The villages once straddled the historic Qutb Road, the primary route connecting Shahjahanabad, the walled city of Delhi, to Qutb Minar, on Delhi's southern edge, since the Mughal era. The displaced people were relocated in Karol Bagh to the west, a rocky region that had previously been populated only by trees and wild bushes. However, three structures were spared demolition. These comprised the Hanuman temple, a Jain temple in Jaisingh Pura, and the Jantar Mantar.
Construction
Plans for the development of a central business district took shape as the construction of the new capital of British India began to assume traction. Headed by W.H. Nicholls, the chief architect to the Government of India, the plans featured a central plaza based on the European Renaissance and in the Classical style. However, Nicholls left India in 1917, and with Lutyens and Baker preoccupied with the construction of larger buildings in the capital, design of the plaza was eventually entrusted with Robert Tor Russell, chief architect of the Public Works Department, Government of India, who collaborated with Sobha Singh in the construction of New Delhi.Originally barren and arid, the area saw its first development with the construction of Sujan Singh Block A, followed by Blocks B and C, then Scindia House block, Regal Building, Rivoli Cinema, and the American Express block. These properties were built and privately owned by Sobha Singh as the British Government aimed to ensure Delhi had a blend of official and private spaces. Subsequently, Sardar Bahadur Dharam Singh Sethi and Sardar Bahadur Narain Singh of Akoi joined in developing the area, constructing buildings such as the Odeon Cinema and structures on the southern side.
Connaught Place was named after Prince Arthur, the 1st Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria and uncle of King George VI. Prince Arthur visited India in 1921 and laid the foundation of the Council House. In 2013, Connaught Place was renamed Rajiv Chowk, in honor of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Connaught Place's Georgian architecture is modelled after the Royal Crescent in Bath, designed by the architect John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774. While the Royal Crescent is semi-circular and a three-storied residential structure, Connaught Place consists of two floors, which made almost a complete circle intended to house commercial establishments on the ground with residential space on the first floor. The circle was eventually designed with two concentric circles, creating an Inner Circle, Middle Circle and the Outer Circle with seven roads radiating from a circular central park known as Radial Roads. As per the original plan, the different blocks of Connaught Place were to be joined from above, employing archways, with radial roads below them. However, the circle was 'broken up' to give it a grander scale. Even the blocks were originally planned to be in height but later reduced to the present two-storied structure with an open colonnade.
Government plans to have New Delhi Railway Station built inside Central Park were rejected by railway authorities as they found the idea impractical, and instead, chose the nearby Paharganj area. Construction work began in 1929, with the Viceroy's House, Secretariat Building, Parliament House, and India Gate completed by 1933, well after the city's inauguration in 1931.
Early years
Early commercial establishments belonged to traders from the Kashmere Gate area: Harnarain Gopinath, Kanter's, Galgotia and Snowhite. Some of the other oldest and still-extant establishments include Ram Chandra & Sons, Novex, Dhoomi Mal Gallery, Vaish at Rivoli, Indian Arts Palace, Mahatta & Company.Regal Cinema, the first cinema in Connaught Place, commenced operations around this time and went on to host popular concerts, theatre groups, and ballet performances. The Odeon and Rivoli followed the Regal, while the Indian Talkie House opened in 1938. Initially, only Indian snacks were available in the area; gradually, restaurants opened in the plaza, with outlets like Kwality, United Coffee House and others offering Continental and Mughlai cuisines.
Wenger's, the confectioners, was one of the first shops in Connaught Place. The firm also owned New Delhi's largest restaurant, located on the first floor of their current A-Block outlet. Originally established in 1926 as Spencers in Kashmere Gate, Wenger's was owned by a Swiss couple and introduced Delhi to pastries and homemade Swiss chocolates. In its early years, it was primarily patronized by British officers, Indian royalty, and a few businessmen with international exposure, as Delhi remained a city of classical taste within the walled city. Over the years, Wenger's opened another shop adjacent to their original location in Connaught Place's A Block. This space had previously belonged to Harnarains, a food processing brand established in the 1860s. Harnarains currently operates under the name Harnarains International. Davico's, located across Connaught Plaza, and the Standard restaurant were popular for decades before eventually fading away. Another long-standing establishment, the Embassy Restaurant, opened in 1948.
New Delhi's first luxury hotel, The Imperial, established in 1936 in Janpath, eventually became a haunt for the royalty and a place for political discussions. It was here that Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten met to discuss the Partition of India and the birth of Pakistan.
Residents of Connaught Place gradually moved into the first-floor quarters, which were nearly fully occupied by 1938. However, it took another decade for the plaza to transform into the bustling marketplace it would later become, as World War II began and the Indian independence movement intensified and reached a feverish pitch. Markets experienced dwindling sales, but post-independence business began to burgeon in the 1950s.
Post-independence
Until the 1980s, a Phatphat Sewa, a Harley Davidson rickshaw service, took visitors from Connaught Place to the Red Fort and Chandani Chowk, before it ceased operations due to pollution concerns. The empty block of the Inner Circle came into use in the late 1970s with the construction of an underground market, the first in Delhi, Palika Bazaar, at the junction point. Stretching up to the Outer Circle, it also came with an adjoining underground parking lot. Concurrently, the State Emporiums on Baba Karak Singh Marg radial emerged. However, a major alteration in the skyline was the development of a skyscraper comprising red sandstone and glass, the Jeevan Bharti building, which was designed by architect Charles Correa. In 1986, it towered over the low-lying, predominantly white Connaught Place and faced criticism for being too futuristic. However, as other skyscrapers were gradually built on the periphery, the debate faded away.Cinemas
With the introduction of talkies to Indian cinema in 1931, the new medium quickly gained immense popularity. In the 1930s and 1940s, four theaters opened within Connaught Place Plaza: Regal, Rivoli, Odeon, and the short-lived "Indian Talkie House," which opened in 1938.Connaught Place sprouted as the entertainment hub of New Delhi. The Regal, the first theatre in the area, was opened in 1932 by Sir Sobha Singh. It was designed by architect Walter Sykes George and mainly hosted stage performances. In the coming years it hosted Western Classical music artists, Russian ballet and British theatre groups, and soon started morning and afternoon movie shows. The next theatre to be built was the Plaza in 1940, designed by Sir Robert Tor Russell, the architect of Connaught Place itself. It was owned by director and actor Sohrab Modi until the early 1950s.
The Odeon was built in 1945 and had the city's second 70mm screen after the "Shiela Cinema" in Paharganj. The Rivoli, close to the Regal, was the smallest theatre in the area. Half a century later, while the vast majority of the theatres were still running, most changed ownership. The Plaza and Rivoli are now owned by multiplex giant PVR INOX Cinemas, while the Odeon runs as a joint venture with Reliance Big Pictures.