Colonial Architecture of Bengaluru

Bengaluru’s colonial period began in earnest in 1799 when British forces captured Seringapatam, the capital of Tipu Sultan’s kingdom and extended their administrative control across the former Mysore territory. The city they encountered was already a substantial settlement with a well organised market district, a stone fort, a botanical garden of considerable scientific interest and a network of water tanks that supported both the urban population and the surrounding agricultural land. What the British built alongside this existing city over the following century and a half created an urban landscape so distinct from the old settlement that the two sections of the city remained physically, socially and economically separate for generations. The traces of this division, in architecture, in the scale and character of streets, in the distribution of parks and open spaces and in the social geography of different neighbourhoods, remain visible in the city today long after the administrative distinctions that produced them were dissolved by independence and reorganisation.

Bengaluru Cantonment

The Bengaluru Cantonment was established in 1809 to house British military troops and the administrative apparatus required to govern the region following the incorporation of the former Mysore territory into the British India system. The cantonment was laid out several kilometres northeast of the existing Indian city, a deliberate separation that reflected both military doctrine which discouraged the mingling of troops with civilian populations and the social assumptions of colonial administration which organised European and Indian populations in separate spatial zones. Wide avenues, bungalows set in large compounds with gardens, churches, clubs, parade grounds and barracks defined the cantonment’s character. The layout followed British principles of sanitation and spatial organisation that were quite different from the dense and organic street patterns of the pete area. The generous plot sizes and tree lined roads of the cantonment, which survive to this day in areas like Ulsoor and Cooke Town, were designed partly for the comfort of a tropical posting and partly to create a spatial separation that reinforced social hierarchies. St. Mark’s Cathedral, consecrated in 1812 and St. Andrew’s Kirk, built in 1866, remain active and architecturally intact examples of the religious buildings that gave the cantonment its institutional character. Trinity Church, built in 1851, is another surviving example of cantonment ecclesiastical architecture that is still used for worship today.

Attara Kacheri Style

One of the most significant buildings of the colonial period in Bengaluru is Attara Kacheri, the High Court of Karnataka, completed in 1868. The building was designed in the Indo-Saracenic style, an architectural idiom developed by British architects working in India that combined elements of Mughal, Rajput and Gothic Revival design with European structural engineering. The result at Attara Kacheri is a building that reads simultaneously as Indian and European with red brick arches, ornamental towers and a symmetrical facade that conveys institutional authority while incorporating decorative motifs drawn from the subcontinent’s existing architectural traditions. The building faces Cubbon Park and forms one side of the civic ensemble at the centre of the modern city that also includes Vidhana Soudha, constructed in 1956 in a neo Dravidian style that was itself a response to and departure from the Indo Saracenic precedent and the General Post Office. The Indo Saracenic style appears elsewhere in Bengaluru in the old Municipal Building, in parts of the City Railway Station and in several other public structures that demonstrate how British architects attempted to signal both administrative authority and cultural accommodation through built form. Critics of the style have noted that its hybridisation was largely superficial, European structural systems dressed in Indian ornamental detail, but as architecture it achieved a certain grandeur that has proved remarkably durable.

Cubbon Park History

Cubbon Park was established in 1864 under the direction of then-Commissioner of Mysore, Major General Richard Sankey and was named after Sir Mark Cubbon, who served as Commissioner of Coorg and Mysore for two decades and was instrumental in establishing British administrative systems across the region. The park covers approximately 300 acres in the centre of what was the cantonment area and was laid out with the European concept of the public garden, a planned landscape with carriage roads, walking paths, specimen trees and ornamental plantings intended for the leisure of the city’s residents. The park’s design drew on the British tradition of the public park as a democratic space where residents of different classes could enjoy the natural environment within an urban setting, though in colonial Bengaluru the practical demographics of who actually used the space were rather less democratic than the theory suggested. The park contains numerous heritage trees, including specimens of Mahogany, Ficus and Casuarina that are over a century old and several colonial-era structures including the State Central Library, originally the Victoria Library, built in 1888, the Seshadri Iyer Memorial Hall and the Bandstand. It remains one of the largest urban green spaces in South India and one of the few public spaces in Bengaluru that has retained its original character despite surrounding development pressure that has consumed or reduced green spaces across the rest of the city.

Colonial Structures

Beyond Attara Kacheri and Cubbon Park, the colonial period left a substantial architectural legacy across Bengaluru. The Bangalore Palace, constructed between 1862 and 1944 in a Tudor-Gothic revival style for the Wadiyar Maharaja family, represents the intersection of colonial and princely architectural ambitions. The old Government House, now Raj Bhavan, the residence of the Governor of Karnataka, was built in the neoclassical style on a commanding site overlooking the city. The City Railway Station, opened in 1864 and substantially expanded in subsequent decades, combined functional infrastructure with architectural statements appropriate to the era’s confidence in technology and imperial governance. Mayo Hall, built in 1883 and named after the Viceroy Lord Mayo, is another example of the grand civic buildings that the colonial administration constructed to signal both the permanence of British rule and its aspirations to contribute positively to the city’s built fabric. Many of these buildings remain in use today as courts, government offices, cultural institutions and public amenities, giving colonial Bengaluru a continued material presence in the daily life of a city that has otherwise transformed dramatically since independence.

Dual City Impact

The British decision to build a cantonment separate from the existing Indian city created a spatial division that shaped Bengaluru’s urban development for the entire period of colonial rule and left traces that are visible in the city’s geography today. The pete area, the old city around Kempe Gowda’s original settlement, developed according to its own organic logic with dense streets, historic temples and community specific neighbourhoods. The cantonment area developed according to planned principles with wide roads, large plots and institutional buildings. These two areas grew toward each other over time, particularly after the transfer of power in 1947 and the formation of Karnataka in 1956, but the distinction between old and new, organic and planned, temple dense and park-centred, still registers for anyone who moves between the city’s historic core and its mid-century administrative centre. The social geography produced by the cantonment system, with its preference for separation and its legacy of large plot residential development in the areas around the old military zone, also influenced the direction of the city’s subsequent growth, contributing to the expansion of residential development toward the north and east that shaped Bengaluru’s modern urban form. Understanding these colonial spatial decisions helps explain not just the architecture of the colonial quarter but the entire shape of the city as it exists today.

City Center Buildings

A walk through the area bounded by Cubbon Park, Vidhana Soudha and the City Railway Station covers more significant colonial era architecture per square kilometre than any other part of Bengaluru. Attara Kacheri’s red brick and arched facade faces the park directly and remains one of the most imposing buildings in the city. The State Central Library in Cubbon Park, originally the Victoria Library, is a smaller but carefully detailed building in a similar idiom. The General Post Office on Raj Bhavan Road is another Indo Saracenic landmark in active use. Walking this area with even a basic awareness of the architectural styles and the historical contexts in which the buildings were constructed turns a routine urban journey into a structured encounter with a specific chapter of the city’s past. The buildings are not frozen museums but working institutions, courts, libraries and post offices, and their continued functionality is itself a form of historical continuity that Bengaluru’s more purely commercial architecture cannot match.

Heritage Resources

Bengaluru has a small but active heritage walk community whose members lead regular guided tours through the colonial quarter, the pete area and the old cantonment neighbourhoods. These walks, offered by organisations including the Bengaluru Heritage Foundation and various independent guides, provide historical context and access to details that are easy to miss without guidance. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage maintains documentation of Bengaluru’s heritage structures and advocates for their preservation. For visitors or residents wanting to engage with the colonial architectural legacy independently, the concentrated heritage zone around Cubbon Park is the best starting point, a relatively compact area where the major colonial buildings are within comfortable walking distance of one another and where the contrast between the old and new city is immediately legible.