ABOVE PICTURE SHOWS AN EXAMPLE OF VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE: GENERAL POST OFFICE, MARTIN PLACE

The Victorian Age, the period between mid 1800s to the beginning of 1900’s, is significant because of the sense of dizzying change it is characterized by. This era witnessed some form of change in every imaginable sphere of life- technology, literature, art, woman rights, religious beliefs, fashion, social structure et al.

This sense of freedom permeated every section of the society and evoked a sense of doubt that challenged the existing beliefs regarding religion, sexuality, social structure and the role of women. Unsurprisingly, this sense of freedom and the tumulus change in the thought process is reflected heavily in the architecture of this period..

• JACOBETHAN (1830-70)

INTRODUCTION

OTHER MOVEMENTS POPULARISED IN THE PERIOD

Blackwell by Baillie Scott

Anthony Salvin's Harlaxton Manor

Jacobethan is the style designation coined in 1933 by John Betjeman to describe the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s

STYLES CONCEIVED IN VICTORIAN ERA

• RENAISSANCE REVIVAL (1840-90)

Mentmore Towers

National Westminster Bank

• NEO GREC (1845-65)• ROMANESQUE REVIVAL • SECOND EMPIRE (1855-80)• QUEEN ANNE (1870- 1910)

County Hall, Wakefield, designed by architects James Glen Sivewright Gibson and Samuel Russell in 1894.

• BRITISH ARTS AND CRAFT MOVEDMENT (1880-1910)

• GOTHIC REVIVAL

Palace of Westminster, completed in 1870. Designed by Sir Charles Barry and August Pugin

Fonthill Abbey by William Thomas Beckford

• ITALIANATE• NEO CLASSICISM

Glasgow City Chambers by John Carrick

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“SARCENIC” was the term basically used to refer to the style that diffused from the 1870‘s to the early 20th century for colonial buildings in India, adding the elements of Mughal architecture, to the base of Victorian Gothic style.

Initially the British constructed governmental and public buildings in European classical styles regardless of Indian local climate and traditions. Only after the 1858, the local architectural traditions, especially the Mughal tradition were introduced to the colonial erections. This was also the time of Gothic Revival, so Gothic features were used as the base and the domes and Chhatris were used to produce the external appearances to the buildings. This is the reason that it is also known as Indo-British style.

VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE IN KOLKATA

The red brick structure was built on a classical quadrangular plane. It has tall windows with beautiful arches, matching sets of Corinthian pillars and railed roofs with pair of phoenixes at intervals. The decorative tablets, arching gateways and beautiful mansards at each end of the long cloisters running along quadrangles making it gracefully gorgeous.

Originally it was meant to acomodate the offices of the finance department of the British India. Now it housed the main office of the Principal Accountant General (audit & accounts), Government of West Bengal.

Calcutta's rapid growth showed how the colonialists converted the three small villages of Sutanuttee. Gobindapur and Kalikata into a centre for administration, trade and commerce for the east India Company's affairs for the whole sub-continent.

By the 1870's, a Victorian character was created with the construction of the Treasury Building, the Imperial Secretariat, the East India railways office and the culmination of the style, the Calcutta collectorate. such eclectic style can be seen in the East Indian railway's Office (1882-84) in Koilaghat Street.

• TREASURY BUILDING

• IMPERIAL LIBRARY

The building was constructed in 1872, ten years after the establishment of the court itself. The design, by then government architect Walter Granville, was loosely modelled on the 13th-century Cloth Hall at Ypres, Belgium.

• THE COLLECTORATE

• THE HIGH COURT

• VICTORIA MEMORIAL

This foremost of landmarks in Calcutta, designed in the budding Indo-Saracenic architectural style (combining Indian architectural practices that were a fusion of Hindu and Islamic designs with Victorian,Venetian and Egyptian influences and layouts) by Sir William Emerson, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

• THE INDIAN MUSEUM

Walter Granville's grand neoclassical Indian Museum of 1875, assumed to have been designed to emulate the British Museum (see Bach 247), is at least as handsome as his General Post Office.

Originally founded in 1814, the museum was for a long time not only the oldest such foundation in Asia, but the largest, and it is still the largest in India (see Director's Note). But since those early years, much has changed. In recent times, it has not been treated with reverence at all. A huge flyover has been set right in front of it. The "massive simplicity" (Davies 207) of Granville's composition is now best appreciated from inside the courtyard.

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Built in 1863, this monument commemorates the memory of soldiers killed in the fierce battle to recapture Delhi over which the British had lost complete control during the Great Indian Mutiny-Revolt of 1857.

VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE IN DELHI

This building is near St Stephen's Church in Old Delhi, and was completed soon after it. According to R. V. Smith, a raconteur of Delhi's past, "before becoming a rabbit warren of a municipal office" it housed a library and museum

Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Raj until December 1911. However, Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of ancient India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire (as it was officially called) from Calcutta to Delhi.[8] Unlike Calcutta, which was located on the eastern coast of India, Delhi was at the centre of northern India and the Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from the latter.

The British in 1911 shifted the capital of India to Delhi. The eighth city of New Delhi took shape in the imperial style of architecture. From then to now Delhi continues to throb with vitality and hope.

• THE OLD TOWN HALL

The Albert Hall Jaipur was designed by a British architect, Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob, who combined India Islamic architecture with neo-gothic that was fashionable in the Victorian era. This style of architecture is referred to as Indo-Saracenic and the Albert Hall Museum is the finest example in Rajasthan.

• THE MUTINY MEMORIAL

• HAZRATGANJ

VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE IN Jaipur

Prince Albert ceremonially laid the first stone of the building to be named after him and the ceremony took place on the 6th of February 1876. The complex was completed 10 years later in the reign of Madho Singh II who decided the Albert Hall Jaipur should be used as a museum instead of a government building as Madho Singh I had planned.

VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE IN lucknow

Around Hazratganj, the city's main market, there is a fusion of old and modern architecture. It has a multi-level parking lot in place of an old and dilapidated police station making way for extending the corridors into well-aligned pebbled pathways, adorned with piazzas, green areas and wrought-iron Tall, beautifully crafted cast-iron lamp-posts, reminiscent of the Victorian era, flank both sides of the street.Hazratganj is a major Victorian style shopping area.

Hoardings from rooftops and encroachments on the road were removed. Buildings were painted in a uniform crème and pink, same size and colour signages, stone pavements and the Victorian style balustrades, lamp posts, waste-bins, benches, an open air tiny amphitheatre and colourful fountains were constructed

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