Chowringhee is a busy urban office area in central part of Kolkata, just before Esplanade and Dalhousie.
Naming of Chowringhee
Chowringhee was named as Jawaharlal Nehru Road runs on its western side.
History of Chowringhee
The name "Chowringhee" has defied etymologists. There is, however, the legend of a yogi, Chourangi Giri, who discovered an image of the goddess Kali"s face and built the first and founded the original Kalighat temple. In the seventeenth century or prior to it, the area now occupied by the Maidan and Esplanade was a tiger-infested jungle. At the eastern end of it was an old road, which had once been built by the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family from Barisha to Halisahar. Beyond it there were “pools, swamps and rice-fields, dotted here and there with the straggling huts of fishermen, falconers, wood-cutters, weavers and cultivators. In that region were three small villages- Chowringhee, Birjee and Colimba. In 1717, Chowringhee was a village of isolated hovels, surrounded by water-logged paddy-fields and bamboo-groves separated from Gobindapur by the jungle.
Geography of Chowringhee
Chowringhee is located in the busiest part of central Kolkata. It has Janbazar on the north, Taltala and certain areas under Park Street Police Station on the east, Bhowanipore on the south and the Maidan on the west. Chowringhee is spread over areas under New Market, Park Street and Shakespeare Sarani.
First metalled Road in Kolkata
The first road in Kolkata acclaimed was Chitpur Road in 1839. In the evening of 6th July 1857 Chowringhee was lit up with gas lights provided by the Oriental Gas Company. The building of pavements started, which are now also present, in 1858. The pavements were built to facilitate the erection of gas lamps. The traders objected as their customers were forced to park their carriages some distance from the shops.
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