1900 View Of Greens Hotel, Bombay: Taj Mahal Palace’s Neighbour
A 1900 postcard of Green’s Hotel in Bombay captures a grand building that once stood as the neighbour of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel at Apollo Bunder. Originally constructed in 1890 by William Booth Green as mansion flats, the imposing L-shaped building featured spacious verandahs, high ceilings and a large terrace overlooking the harbour. The Taj Mahal Palace opened in December 1903, making the two buildings an extraordinary pair on Bombay’s waterfront.
The Greens hotel attracted a cosmopolitan clientele that included European visitors, British officers and civil servants, sailors, businessmen and members of Bombay’s English-speaking elite. Its atmosphere was distinctly less formal than the prestigious Taj, and contemporary accounts describe Greens’ as a lively social venue with restaurants, dancing and entertainment.
After serving as a hotel for decades, the Tata Group later acquired Greens, and it was demolished in 1973. Its site was used for the construction of the Taj Mahal Tower, now the tower wing of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel complex. The image preserves a vanished piece of Apollo Bunder’s colonial-era waterfront, when Greens Mansions and the newly opened Taj stood side by side overlooking the harbour.
Did you know – the Taj Hotel was the first building in Bombay to be lit by electricity, the first to have telephones in every room, electric elevators, and an ice-making machine! It was also the first to have American fans, German elevators, and so on.
