Untitled (Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus), Bombay)

"Victoria Station, Bombay 2620" at the lower left in the image.

Circa 1890s

Albumen print mounted on card

7.75 x 10.75 in   |  20 x 27 cm

VICTORIA TERMINUS, BOMBAY: A HIGH VICTORIAN ICON IN ALBUMEN, C. 1890S

A commanding frontal prospect of Victoria Terminus—headquarters of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway—shortly after completion, the view centres the great octagonal ribbed dome surmounted by the allegorical figure of Progress and articulates the full Indo-Saracenic / High Victorian Gothic composition by Frederick William Stevens (1847–1900). The façade’s polychrome stonework, arcaded loggias and turrets are crisply recorded, while the blurred traffic at the forecourt conveys the station’s burgeoning urban theatre. Completed in 1888 (opened in 1887 for the Golden Jubilee), the building became the architectural emblem of Bombay’s “Gothic City” and, a century later, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Large-format albumen views of Victoria Terminus were issued by Bombay’s leading studios in the 1890s. The present print’s paper tone, period handling, and commercial vantage are consistent with Clifton & Co., Bombay, who inherited and reissued portions of the Bourne & Shepherd negative stock; where no imprint survives, the prudent credit is “Attributed to Clifton & Co. (after Bourne & Shepherd)”—a formulation widely used in curatorial and market practice for Bombay city views of this decade.

Designed for the G.I.P. Railway and often compared with London’s St Pancras in ambition and scale, Victoria Terminus fuses Venetian Gothic forms with Indian motifs—domes, chhatri-like turrets and foliated carving—set within a symmetrical “C-plan” that frames the central dome. The roofline is animated with finials and pinnacles, while the forecourt—seen here before later traffic islands and landscaping—reads as a civic stage opposite the Municipal Corporation Building (also by Stevens, 1884–93).

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