The research was undertaken as part of a thesis study of a two-year Master's degree from School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi by the author.

The idea that the British capital built Calcutta, is based on a peculiarly colonial notion of what constituted the city itself. The earliest recorded history of Calcutta often begins in the 17th century when Job Charnock came to the banks of river Hooghly and took the lease of three villages – Sutanuti, Govindapur and Kolikata to establish the British East India Company in the Bengal region. Before Charnock, the original settlers were fishermen, falconers and hunters; and over time, people from other occupations also settled in the locality. The 'birth' of the city is attributed to the landing of Job Charnock on the shores of Calcutta, neglecting the presence of already existing indigenous population in the area. The urban history of Calcutta is flawed, as it is exclusively based on the official documents prepared by the colonial administrators and therefore, reflects the colonial viewpoint. During approximately 150 years when Calcutta was the colonial capital, the British officials generated overwhelming documentation that focused on the areas occupied by the British, for the convenience of governing the empire. As a result, the indigenous population was under-represented. This research examines Calcutta’s colonial history from an alternative point of view where the Hindu Bengali elites emerged during the mid-18th century and the local community – the Bengali middle class, come into focus.

The character of a city manifests itself in the historic cores of the city. The 'mohallas' of Shahjahanabad in Delhi, the ‘wadas’ of Maharashtra, the 'pols' of Ahmedabad etc., are the places that bring out the true essence of the city. These historic cores are usually a collection of densely built buildings on narrow street networks. Over the years, these cores undergo a plethora of changes and transformations due to developmental pressures of urbanization that influences the urban fabric. A study of early maps shows that most of the original street patterns largely survived until the end of 19th century. The fabric, thus, becomes a manifestation of various events throughout history, and parallel processes of change, transformation, development, and continuity that are often too complex and layered to understand tangibly.

The research looks into one of the historic neighbourhoods of the city of Calcutta (i.e., Shobhabazaar), and attempts to trace the patterns of transformations in the historic fabric which lead to valuable insights into the discourses between culture, society and its manifestations in the built form. It is based on the premise that transformations in the city results in changes to the building structure at an individual level. It aims to be a step in understanding a completely new context and its antecedents. The intention is to come up with a narrative of the place in time, as a back-and-forth process of incidents and accommodations. The built heritage acts as signpost for tracing the origin and evolution of the society and locating it in terms of its development. The residential typologies are looked at in relation to change, and causative factors of said changes. These together give an idea of the nature of the built-form and its change with time as a part of the story of the city. The study highlights the issues involved in the adaptation, evolution and continuity of the traditional residential type which forms the basis for formulation of guidelines and policies for future development and interventions in the traditional fabric of the city, and by-and-large protection of these traditional heritage houses.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the northern part of Calcutta was structured by the Bengali Zamindars who bought vast tracts of land, settled tenants, and fostered a large number of dependents related by kinship and service. Many of them made fortunes by trading in salt, silk, and opium, but their extensive investment in landed property was the key to their rise in power. They formed the locus of social activity; the most significant events took place under their patronage and thus, formed the nucleus of the residential neighbourhoods. In the mid-18th century, with the Permanent Settlement Act, Raja Nabakrishna Deb invested in property and large tracts of land (both urban and rural) and was allowed to collect rent for it. On the land he purchased and became owner of, the Raja built large palatial mansions and let out the rest on rent, which became the basis of the new heterogeneous para or neighbourhood with the ‘self-styled Raja’ at the nucleus of development.

Around the Raja, settled the middling class of professionals - teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and those who came to occupy the middle to low ranks in the colonial services. The houses of these middle-income of professionals were part of a very complex and diverse neighbourhood structure called the "para" which had evolved a harmonious architecture. The para constituted of the dwellings of the comprador, his owned bazaars, the priest of his temple, the middle-class householders who constructed their residences on his rented land, artisans who fulfilled their needs and the labourers of slums – all belonging to different castes and communities. In today’s pace of development, existence of such paras contributes to the historic fabric of a city’s assets of our past, representing the histories of communities, embodying their tradition, heritage and culture through architecture and urban form.

Over the course of many years, these traditional houses have changed many hands in ownership by sub-division of the properties and only some of these traditional typologies today exist on ground. Today complicated trust funds, family disputes, changing tropical climate, lack of developmental guidelines and frameworks, intimidation of developers and lack of funds threat the existence of these residential houses.

While the British colonial architecture in Calcutta has been widely, although not completely, documented, the mansions and palaces of the city’s mercantile class are slowly gaining momentum in terms of recognition and awareness. At present, the Heritage Conservation Cell of the KMC (Kolkata Municipal Corporation) recognises around 1400 structures in the city as heritage buildings. These structures, categorised in Grade I, Grade IIA, Grade IIB and Grade III were mostly the residences of the urban elite. However, the traditional houses of the Bengali middle class remain unrecognised by the authorities and are most vulnerable to the fast developmental changes taking place in the city.

The residences of North Calcutta have always been intriguing and exciting as a resident of the city. However, lack of detailed architectural material on the same has resulted in a muted and unclear understanding of the development of the indigenous part of the city. Although it has been realized that maintenance of built environment is indispensable for a sensitive growth of a society, changing economic and social conditions often turn these legacies into liabilities. Under the increasing pressure of the city’s growing population, the value of urban land has climbed up steeply, with serious repercussions on the fate of built heritage. The cost of maintenance, the financial attractions of redevelopment, the need for urban renewal and similar factors are threatening buildings of architectural and historic interest. This raises the question of how to conserve them.

1. An Integrated Master Plan is the utmost requirement to the city, where through careful upgrading, building refurbishment and new infill, the Master Plan can spell the way for a sensitive and sustainable uplift, whilst creating opportunities for new business.
2. The Heritage Conservation Cell’s (HCC) strategy attempts to rescue the most relevant heritage structures with little interaction between them and the owners, who are also the ones who carry its economic burden. As in the case of Maharashtra, the Heritage owner groups should be organised and dialogues between them and the heritage authorities of Kolkata should take place.
3. Identification of possibilities of Adaptive Reuse of the city’s built heritage and potentiality to use this cultural capital to promote tourism developing new functions like libraries, heritage hotels etc. should be taken into consideration. Such policies generate direct benefits in the form of revenue collected and substantial indirect benefits in the form of stimulating ancillary industries and generating employment.
4. Heritage awareness is the key factor here to maximise the benefits of existing policies to the owners. It has the capability of affecting the urban system in physical, economic, social and cultural terms and regenerating rundown districts by stimulating new activities and investment in amenities.
5. There is a lack of expert and skilled craftsmen to do the repair work on these historic houses. The HCC can prepare a list of such skilled craftsmen and artisans who can be empanelled with the KMC to conduct repair work when required.
6. Delineation of heritage precincts by the Committee to ensure that the areas within it maintain the essential historic character or ambience and the development within the area is undertaken with care and sympathy to form, character and scale of existing heritage sites and buildings.

1. Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity – India 1880 – 1980, Oxford India Paperback Series, Oxford University Press (2000) by Jon Lang, Madhavi Desai & Miki Desai.
2. City Dimensions, ETH Basel Studio, Kolkata (2008) by Karl Johan Nyqvist & Alicia Casals San Miguel.
3. Historic Buildings at Chitpur in Kolkata: Problems and Prospects Through Urban Conservation and Planning, Routledge (2012) by Shivashish Bose.
4. Houses of Traditional Kolkata: Understanding Adaptability in context of Urban Transformations, CEPT University, Ahmedabad (2014) by Saptarshi Mitra.
5. Locating Identities: Residential Architecture of The Bengali Elite in Calcutta, Mid-Eighteenth to Late-Nineteenth Century, The University of Minnesota (2002) by Monolina Bhattacharyya.
6. Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the Colonial Uncanny, Volume 2 of Asia's Transformations/Asia's Great Cities Series, Routledge (2005) by Swati Chattopadhyay.
7. Seeking the Lost Layers: An Inquiry into the Traditional Dwellings of the Urban Elite in North Calcutta, CEPT University, Ahmedabad (2008) by Kamalika Bose
8. The Great Houses of Kolkata 1750-2006, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney (2008) by Joanne Lee Taylor.
9. The Great Houses of Old Calcutta, in Calcutta: The Living City, Vol. I, The Past, ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri (Calcutta: Oxford University Press) (1990) by Chitra Deb.