Which commercial centre in New Delhi is the city’s biggest and busiest and was built by the British?
Answers
Connaught Place is one of the largest financial, commercial and business centres in New Delhi, India. It is often abbreviated as CP and houses the headquarters of several noted Indian firms. As of July 2018, Connaught Place was the ninth most expensive office location in the world with an annual rent of USD 153 per sq ft.
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. The villages were once situated along the historic Qutb Road, the main road connecting Shahjahanabad, the walled city of Delhi (now known as Old Delhi) to Qutb Minar in south Delhi since the Mughal era. The displaced people were relocated in Karol Bagh to the west, a rocky area populated only by trees and wild bushes. However, three structures were spared demolition. These were Hanuman temple, a Jain temple in Jaisinghpura and the Jantar Mantar.
Named after Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught (1850–1942), third son of Queen Victoria and uncle of King George VI of England, who visited India in 1921 and laid the foundation of the Council House (now Sansad Bhavan, or Parliament House).
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 had only 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. 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 172 metres (564 ft) 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. Finally construction work began in 1929, with construction of the Viceroy House (present Rashtrapati Bhavan), Secretariat Building, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial, India Gate were completed by 1933, long after the inauguration of the city in 1931.