Grand Hotel At Chowringee Road Calcutta, 1908 Postcard
This 1908 photo postcard shows the Grand Hotel in Chowringee Road, Calcutta or Kolkata. Also once fondly referred as the Grande Dame of Chowringee. Prior to that it was the residence of a Colonel Grand, of East India Company, in the early 19th century. A British lady Mrs Annie Monk bought out the building and converted it into a boarding house.
It was later sold to one, Arathoon Stephen, an Armenian businessman. Stephen, established it as a hotel and named it: Grand Hotel. It had its ups and downs, in the 1930s after Stephen died, a typhoid epidemic resulted in the death of six people in the hotel. The drainage system was the suspect, the Hotel was closed down for six years.
An ambitious Indian entrepreneur, Mohan Singh Oberoi, took it over in 1937. Since then it has been with the Oberoi Group. The Grand Hotel is now better known as: The Oberoi Grand, Kolkata. An advertisement signboard, “Lyon & Lyon Gun & Rifle Makers”, is visible near the entrance. Quite a number of horse carriages and some bullock carts are visible in front of the Hotel, perhaps, awaiting passengers and luggages.
Read more- The Grand Dame of Chowringee.
Did you know- in 1717, Chowringee was a small village surrounded by paddy fields. Beyond the paddy fields, there were jungles where Warren Hastings hunted tigers on elephant back.
From the collection- Old Air-India Postcard – M F Hussain’s Ragamala Painting., Mahatma Gandhi With His Followers – Press Photo 1933., Vintage Postcard Writer’s Building Calcutta 1900., Antique Photograph Calcutta Horse-Drawn Tram 1880., Our Journey Around The World – 1894 Book
