The Many Architectures of Bombay

No great metropolis in the world is as peculiar as Bombay. No other great city emerged out of physical reshaping, being reclaimed out of the sea. This reshaping continues to this day, even as we choose to assiduously turn our backs on the very sea that made us its citizens. Bombay’s architecture follows the arc of its remaking and retains the artefacts of its long colonization. We are fortunate to have these layers still all around us, still in use, but we take them for granted at our own peril. We will examine several eventful turns in the city’s history that would lead to the evolution of its architecture. The Great Fire of 1803, the bringing down of the Fort walls in the 1860s, the impact of the events of 1857 countrywide, the devastating bubonic plague of the 1890s