Commercial Street Bangalore’s Most Famous Shopping Center, 1900 Postcard
A 1900 photo postcard of Commercial Street one of the most famous shopping centers in Bangalore (Bengaluru). The picture shows a quaint unhurried street during the British era. Unlike today, it is a bustling shopping avenue, packed with people and vehicles. Sad to say the street’s quaintness now seems to have rapidly diminished.
Commercial Street had mostly family-run businesses until it gave way in 2000 after Bangalore exploded into frenzied development. During the British era, officers would arrive here on horseback. One of them was the famous Winston Churchill who bought his cigars and shoes from this street. The shoe shop where Churchill was a regular was run by a jew, Rubin Moses. Rubin Moses & Sons shoe shop sprawled across plots 7, 8, and 9 on Commercial Street.
The shop opened in the 1900s and did well from the start until it closed down in 1985. Almost all the Jews including Rubin Moses and his family migrated to Isreal after it became an independent country in 1948. However, one of Rubin Moses’s sons Arthur stayed back to look after the store till 1984 when he died. Bangalore was formed as a military cantonment from a cluster of villages after the 4th Anglo-Mysore War in 1799. Click on the image to enlarge.
Did you know – in Commercial Street, there are over 300 shops and vendors and it is interspersed with countless bylanes.
Past posts – M. Suriyamoorthy Charcoal Drawing 1964 (#19)., Imperial Procession At The Delhi Durbar, 1903 Photo., Aerial Views of Rashtrapati Bhavan & Parliament Delhi, 1946 Print., Old Newspapers 1866, The Illustrated London News.
