Bombay et Esplanade. Hôtel

Negative no. 1036 at lower left in the image; period manuscript caption on mount “No. 46. Bombay et Esplanade. Hôtel

Circa 1880s–1890s

Albumen print mounted on card

7.5 x 10.25 in   |  19.2 x 26 cm

BOMBAY FROM THE RAJABAI TOWER: THE ESPLANADE AND WATSON’S HOTEL, C. 1880S–90S

A high vantage view—almost certainly from the Rajabai Clock Tower—looking across the Fort precinct towards the open Esplanade/maidans with Watson’s (Esplanade) Hotel prominently in the right foreground; the harbour with riding ships beyond. The hotel’s distinctive multi-storey cast-iron frame and continuous verandahs are clearly legible. The Rajabai Tower (completed 1878) provides the likely platform for this elevated perspective; comparable “Aerial view from Rajabhai/Rajabai Tower” prints are recorded in the market.

This commanding nineteenth-century view situates Watson’s (Esplanade) Hotel—India’s oldest surviving cast-iron building—within the urban theatre of late-Victorian Bombay. Designed/engineered by Rowland Mason Ordish, the prefabricated iron structure was shipped from Britain and erected 1867–69 as a luxury hotel facing the Esplanade; it later gained lasting fame as the venue for India’s first Lumière cinématographe screening in 1896. The photograph crystallises the moment when Bombay’s civic centre expanded across the cleared ramparts into a modern metropolis of maidans, Gothic public buildings and commercial spectacle.

From the Rajabai Clock Tower, the camera surveys the broad sweep of the maidans toward the harbour crowded with shipping, articulating Bombay’s dual identity as an imperial entrepôt and architectural showpiece. Large-format albumen views of the Esplanade Hotel and the Esplanade/maidan ensemble are a recognised sub-genre of Bombay photography from the 1870s–90s, issued by leading studios and anonymous operators alike; related examples reside in institutional holdings and appear periodically on the market.

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