Watson’s Hotel: India’s Oldest Cast Iron Building

Early one morning In 1867, a traveler walking through the familiar streets of Kala Ghoda district in Bombay noticed something strange “like a huge birdcage had risen like an exhalation from the earth.” The birdcage was the skeleton of the Watson’s Hotel, later to be called Esplanade Mansion, India’s oldest surviving cast iron building and one of the few in the world. When it was completed in 1869, it was heralded as one of the finest examples of cast-iron architecture in the world.

Watson’s Hotel now knows as Esplanade Mansion in 2008. Photo: Ben Lepley/Flickr

Source: amusingplanet.com