Untitled [Set of 6 Architectural Engravings of Bombay’s Gothic Revival and Civic Institutions, 1864–1893]
a) Girgaum Church, Bombay – Sketch Of The Chancel
W Emerson, Architect
Wood-engraving on paper
Image size: 15 x 11 in (38 x 28 cm)
Sheet size: 16.5 x 12.5 in (42 x 32 cm)
Published in The Building News, 21 February 1873
This engraving, published in The Building News in 1873, illustrates the chancel of Girgaum Church, Bombay (now Mumbai), designed by William Emerson (1843–1924), a British architect noted for his prolific work in India. Emerson was closely associated with the Gothic Revival movement and Indo-Saracenic architectural experiments, later becoming President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. His most prominent commissions include the Crawford Market dome in Bombay and the Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta.
The interior view highlights the Gothic Revival vocabulary adapted to Bombay’s ecclesiastical setting: ribbed stone vaulting, richly carved capitals, pointed arches with foliate ornament, and polychrome detailing in the altar and reredos. The scene is enlivened with clergy and parishioners, providing insight into the colonial social and religious milieu of late nineteenth-century Bombay.
The engraving was disseminated in The Building News—an influential professional periodical—bringing architectural developments in India to the notice of British practitioners and patrons. Such prints serve as vital historical records of the stylistic cross-currents shaping Bombay’s identity as a cosmopolitan “Gothic City” of the Empire.
b) The European General Hospital, Bombay – Architectural plan
Wood-engraving on paper
Image size: 15 x 11 in (38 x 28 cm)
Sheet size: 16.5 x 12.5 in (42 x 32 cm)
Published in The Builder, 5 November 1864
This engraved architectural plan on paper, showing ground and upper floor layouts published in The Builder in 1864, presents the detailed architectural plans for the European General Hospital, Bombay (later known as St. George’s Hospital). Conceived during the expansion of Bombay in the mid-nineteenth century, the hospital was intended to provide modern medical facilities for Europeans residing in the colonial city.
The plans reveal a rational cross-axial layout, with long ward blocks, central administrative areas, and carefully delineated service wings—illustrating contemporary Victorian principles of hospital planning, which emphasised light, ventilation, and segregation of functions to minimise contagion. The precision of the drawing reflects the heightened interest in sanitary reform and medical architecture that characterised the mid-nineteenth century, particularly under the influence of Florence Nightingale’s hospital design guidelines.
Built in the Gothic Revival style, St. George’s Hospital formed part of the larger civic infrastructure of the Fort precinct, aligning with Bombay’s transformation into a modern “imperial city.” Together with educational, judicial, and civic institutions, the hospital demonstrated the colonial administration’s concern for order, welfare, and discipline.
The Builder, the leading architectural periodical of Victorian Britain, regularly published such plans to disseminate imperial architectural practice, presenting Bombay’s civic infrastructure as on par with the metropolitan centre. This engraving, therefore, is not only an architectural record but also a document of colonial authority and maritime significance.
c) Market Fountain, Bombay
W Emerson, Architect
Wood-engraving on paper
Image size: 15 x 11 in (38 x 28 cm)
Sheet size: 16.5 x 12.5 in (42 x 32 cm)
Published in The Building News, 27 November 1874
This finely detailed engraving, published in The Building News in 1874, depicts the Market Fountain at Crawford Market (now Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market), Bombay, designed by William Emerson (1843–1924). Emerson, a prominent British architect active in India, was instrumental in shaping the architectural fabric of late nineteenth-century Bombay through his Gothic Revival and Indo-Saracenic designs.
The fountain, situated in the heart of Crawford Market—one of Bombay’s principal civic spaces—served both a decorative and utilitarian purpose. The engraving illustrates the elaborate sculptural programme: classical basins with lion heads spouting water, enriched friezes, and a soaring vertical composition crowned by allegorical figures. The surrounding scene, populated by Indian vendors and market-goers, emphasises its role as a social hub, where colonial architecture intersected with indigenous urban life.
By publishing such works, The Building News introduced British readers to architectural projects across the Empire, underscoring Bombay’s reputation as a “Gothic city” of the East. The Market Fountain, like the Flora Fountain (1864) and later memorial fountains at Kala Ghoda, epitomises Victorian Bombay’s ambition to create civic grandeur through monumental public works.
d) Memorial Fountain, Bombay
F W Stevens, F.R.I.B.A., Architect
Wood-engraving on paper
Image size: 11 x 15 in (28 x 38 cm)
Sheet size: 12.5 x 16.5 in (32 x 42 cm)
Published in The Building News, 21 April 1893
This engraving, published in The Building News in 1893, depicts the Memorial Fountain at Bombay (now Mumbai), designed by the celebrated architect Frederick William Stevens (1847–1900), F.R.I.B.A., best known for his iconic Gothic Revival masterpiece, the Victoria Terminus (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus).
The fountain is located at Kala Ghoda, an area that developed in the late nineteenth century as a prominent civic and cultural quarter of Bombay. Conceived both as an ornamental and functional structure, it reflects the late Victorian penchant for urban beautification through monumental public fountains. The engraving presents not only the ornate Indo-Saracenic architectural design, with domed canopies, sculptural details and water jets, but also the vibrancy of Bombay street life at the fin de siècle, with horse-drawn carriages, native pedestrians, and grazing cattle animated around the fountain.
Such works published in specialist architectural journals were intended to disseminate knowledge of current architectural practice to the professional community in Britain and the Empire. They serve today as important historical documents of the transformation of Bombay into a “Gothic city,” where Stevens and his contemporaries—Chisholm, Khan and Scott—shaped its civic identity through monumental architecture.
e) The European General Hospital, Bombay
Designed by T. Roger Smith, Architect
Wood-engraving on paper
Image size: 11 x 15 in (28 x 38 cm)
Sheet size: 12.5 x 16.5 in (32 x 42 cm)
Published in The Builder, 5 November 1864
This engraving, published in The Builder in 1864, depicts the European General Hospital, Bombay, designed by the British architect Thomas Roger Smith (1830–1903). Later known as St. George’s Hospital, this was among the most significant medical institutions constructed in nineteenth-century Bombay, reflecting the colonial administration’s growing emphasis on public health and sanitary reform.
The design demonstrates Smith’s Gothic Revival idiom, here tempered by adaptations to Bombay’s tropical climate. The long arcaded façade, punctuated by pointed arches and large windows, ensured light and ventilation for the wards. The central block, crowned with a distinctive dome, served as the hospital’s architectural focal point and a symbol of civic modernity.
Constructed during a period of rapid urban expansion, the hospital embodied the mid-Victorian ideal of medical architecture as an instrument of order, discipline, and welfare. It was also emblematic of Britain’s broader imperial project to reproduce European institutional forms in colonial cities.
The engraving vividly animates the scene with figures and a palanquin in the foreground, underlining the contrast between European monumental architecture and indigenous daily life. Published in The Builder, this image conveyed to metropolitan readers the ambition and modernity of Bombay’s new civic infrastructure.
f) The Fort Police Courts, Bombay
John Adams, Architect
Wood-engraving on paper, with architectural plan elevations inset
Image size: 11.6 x 15.5 in (29.5 x 39.5 cm)
Published in The Building News, 16 October 1885
This detailed architectural engraving, published in The Building News in 1885, depicts the Fort Police Courts, Bombay, designed by the British architect John Adams. The building, later known as the Small Causes Court at Esplanade/Killa, is a significant example of the Gothic Revival civic architecture that defined Bombay in the late nineteenth century.
The structure is characterised by its pointed arches, rose windows, and an elaborate façade of tiered arcades, demonstrating the influence of High Victorian Gothic idioms adapted to colonial civic infrastructure. The inset architectural plans at the top of the plate provide further insight into the functional organisation of the courts, reflecting the intersection of ornament and utility in the design of colonial judicial institutions.
Situated within the Fort precinct, this building formed part of the larger effort to establish Bombay as a modern imperial city with monumental civic structures, comparable to the Town Hall, University buildings, and Crawford Market. The engraving underscores the dual importance of such buildings: as functional centres of law and order and as architectural statements of colonial authority and permanence.
The Building News, by regularly featuring such engravings, provided British audiences with a window into architectural developments across the Empire, simultaneously shaping metropolitan perceptions of Bombay as the “Gothic City” of the East.
THE GOTHIC CITY OF THE EAST: BOMBAY’S CIVIC IDENTITY IN ARCHITECTURAL PRINT
This rare suite of six engravings and architectural plans, published between 1864 and 1893 in the leading British journals The Builder and The Building News, documents the architectural transformation of Bombay (now Mumbai) during the height of the Gothic Revival and Indo-Saracenic movements.
The works illustrate designs by Frederick William Stevens (1847–1900), William Emerson (1843–1924), Thomas Roger Smith (1830–1903), and John Adams—architects who collectively defined the civic identity of colonial Bombay. Their commissions included public fountains, ecclesiastical interiors, judicial courts, hospitals, and welfare institutions, each embodying Victorian ideals of order, sanitation, and monumental grandeur while adapting Gothic Revival and Indo-Saracenic idioms to the tropical climate and cosmopolitan setting of the city.
Among the highlights are Stevens’s Memorial Fountain at Kala Ghoda and his Royal Alfred Sailors’ Home, both hallmarks of his early mastery that culminated in the Victoria Terminus. Emerson is represented by designs for the Girgaum Church Chancel and Market Fountain at Crawford Market, reflecting his sensitivity to ecclesiastical and civic form. The Fort Police Courts by John Adams underscore the Gothic ornamentation of Bombay’s judicial architecture, while the European General Hospital (St. George’s Hospital), planned by T. Roger Smith, epitomises Victorian medical architecture informed by sanitary reform.
Published engravings such as these not only disseminated current practice to metropolitan audiences but also served as instruments of imperial representation, presenting Bombay as a modern “Gothic City of the East.” Animated with depictions of street life, parishioners, and market scenes, these images capture the interplay of monumental colonial architecture and the lived urban fabric of nineteenth-century Bombay. Today, they remain invaluable records of a city in the making, where architecture articulated both civic pride and imperial authority.
(Set of six)
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