College Square, Lake Temple Road and Dalhousie Square have been identified as areas that should be preserved as heritage precincts or historical districts by a group of longstanding advocates of heritage conservation in the city.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation website defines a heritage precinct as “the neighbourhood or environs of a place or a group of buildings that share wholly or partly certain common physical, social, cultural significance worth preservation and conservation. Ambience can be defined as the quantitative, qualitative aspects attached to heritage buildings that are necessary for their appreciation of space and viewing corridors.”

Though this definition has appeared on the website for many years, the municipal body has yet to declare any area of Calcutta as a heritage precinct.

“It is a matter of shame that Calcutta, one of the great cities of modernity, has no heritage precincts,” said writer Amit Chaudhuri, who is the founder-member of Calcutta Architectural Legacies (CAL), a group of heritage activists in the city.

Cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Puducherry, and Delhi have heritage precincts that draw worldwide attention.

Chaudhuri along with architect Partha Ranjan Das and conservation architect Kamalika Bose are putting forward proposals for areas to be declared as heritage precincts to the municipal body.

The proposal for Dalhousie has already been submitted to the KMC. The group is working on the proposals for College Square and Lake Temple Road.

Asked about the choice of areas, Chaudhuri said Dalhousie already has five national monuments, including the Currency Building, Metcalfe Hall, St John Church, Maghen David Synagogue, Beth-El-Synagogue which already places certain restrictions on development in the area.

Besides, it was also the seat of administration during the colonial period and has the Writers Building and other 78 Grade I heritage structures in the area.

“Dalhousie Square is a natural choice for a historical precinct and we should start by declaring it as one. Once Dalhousie is declared a heritage precinct we can identify other areas that can follow,” said Chaudhuri.

“Given the city’s unique history, which we both invoke and ignore at will, it’s a matter of some urgency.”

A heritage precinct, says Chaudhuri, is an area which embodies distinctive architectural styles and features that are inextricable from a particular period of history.

“Once you lose these, you lose a way of life, a history. Architectural styles may or may not manifest themselves as monuments but they represent the ethos of a neighbourhood,” he said by way of explaining why Lake Temple Road or College Square should be declared a precinct.

“Calcutta is very much a city of modernity. It is directly and crucially related to who we
are as modern Indians. No part of the city goes back too far beyond 300 years. What happened from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century was a period of great flowering of modern Bengali culture and that is reflected in the everyday spaces and buildings in the various neighbourhoods of the city. These neighbourhoods are what makes the city most worth visiting or living in,” said Chaudhuri.

“All visitors are struck by the uniqueness of these areas once they discover them. Other cities that have a comparable cultural past have gone some way to hold on to that inheritance. We have been arguing for this for almost a decade now; petitions have been signed; Amartya Sen wrote a letter in support. When will Kolkata start getting the precincts it deserves?"

The proposals include maps that delineate the heritage precincts.

Like the Dalhousie map stretches from Canning Street to Eden Garden Road with the Hooghly on the east and portions of Rabindra Sarani and Mahatma Gandhi Road, the Lake Temple Road precinct is delineated by Meghnad Saha Sarani, Sarat Chatterjee Avenue, Lake Place and Rabindra Sarabar Stadium.

The proposals also suggest preparing a list of such precincts and formulating special regulations for the precincts, streets, and areas that will include restrictions or regulations on development, re-development, repairs, road widening, signages and other things.

There are also proposals to notify such precincts and invite opinions from the public which will then be duly considered.

“There should be regulated development in such areas with proper signage, and preservation should be of both exteriors and interiors of the buildings and it shouldn’t just be about keeping the facades. The unique interiors of the buildings, too, should be conserved with care whenever possible,” said Chaudhuri.

Many graded heritage structures in the city have been allowed to be developed where the facade of the building is all that remains with everything else demolished and rebuilt very differently.

Chaudhuri said: “Both College Square and Dalhousie are non-residential, commercial areas that can be easily turned into heritage precincts. One gets the impression that the residents of Lake Temple Road, which is an astonishing area in terms of its architectural ethos, are proud of where they live from the general upkeep and lack of neglect of the houses. It’s very much worth exploring the possibility of it being deemed
a historical district.”