Connaught Place, New Delhi

Connaught Place is one of the largest financial, commercial and business centers in Delhi. It is often abbreviated as CP and houses the headquarters of several Indian firms. It was developed as a showpiece of Lutyens' Delhi featuring a Central Business District. Named after the Duke of Connaught, the construction work was started in 1929 and completed in 1933. It was renamed as the Rajiv Chowk after the late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.[1]Today, Connaught Place is one of the most vibrant business districts of Delhi. Construction: Plans to have a central business district were as the construction of the new capital of Imperial India started taking shape, mooted by W.H. Nicholls, the chief architect to the Government of India, who planned a central plaza based on the European Renaissance and Classical style. However Nicholls left India in 1917, and with Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker busy working on larger buildings of the capital, it was Robert Tor Russell, chief architect to the Public Works Department (PWD), Government of India who eventually designed the plaza. Architecture: Georgian Architecture. Architecture Style: European renaissance and classical style. CP Today: Entrance of the underground shopping complex, Palika Bazaar, in Connaught Place, built in 1970s Palika Bazar entrance at the time of Commonwealth Games. Connaught Place on a busy weekday: The area is instantly recognizable on any map of Delhi, being the big circle in the middle with radial roads spreading out in all directions, like spokes on a wheel. Eight separate roads lead out from Connaught's inner circle, named Parliament Street and Radial Roads 1 through 7. Twelve different roads lead out from Connaught Circus, the outer ring; the most well-known of these is Janpath, the continuation of Radial Road 1. It is a logically planned area and houses one of India's first under ground market-Palika Bazaar (Municipal Market), named after nagarpalika. The Outer Circle is known as the Connaught Circus (officially Indira Chowk),having rows of restaurants, shops and hotels, the Middle Circle has offices and small eating outlets.[12] The central park of Connaught Place has long been a venue for cultural events. In 2005-06, it was rebuilt after the construction of the Delhi Metro station below it. That station, Rajiv Chowk, is the interchange for the Yellow and Blue lines of the Metro and one of the largest and busiest stations in the network. Structure: Modeled after the Royal Crescent in Bath, (it was designed by the architect John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774), Connaught Place has only two floors, almost makes a complete circle and was planned to have commercial establishments on the ground with residential area on the first floor.[2] The circle was eventually planned with two concentric circles, creating Inner Circle, Middle Circle and the Outer Circle and seven radial roads, around a circular central park. As per the original plan, the different blocks of Connaught Place were to be joined from above, employing archways, with radial roads below them, but the circle was 'broken up' to give it a grander scale. Even the blocks were originally planned to 172 meters high, but later reduced to present two-storied structure with an open colonnade. Governments plans to have the New Delhi Railway Station to be built

inside the Central Park was rejected by the Railways as it found the idea impractical, instead it chose the nearby Paharganj area. Finally the construction work began in 1929, as principal construction of the Viceroy House (present President's House), Central Secretariat, Parliament House, and All-India War Memorial, India Gate was winding down and was complete by 1933, much after the inauguration of the city in 1931.