Feature

Since the first publication of the theme article 'An Architect's Dhaka' on August 10, we have been receiving many encouragements, and decided to do a series. Often people are sending authentic information and documentation. For example, the chimney in Nimtali was actually the only Lighthouse of Dhaka. The structure demolished in front of the Museum was of a gate to the Nawab's Mansion. I also found that it was indeed Master of Ceremony Shaikh Kamal, Tukhmar Khan and Mirak Bahadur Jalair leading the advanced party sent to prepare the Fort for Islam Khan. Baraduari in Nimtali Kuthi was corrupt pronunciation of Baradari which in Farsi means Hall with Twelve Pillars, a common feature of Persian architecture. Two side pillars of Dhaka gate were rebuilt after road widening before a visit by Ayub Khan to open the Atomic Energy Commission; the gate was once more repaired as hit by a truck in 1973. Early last century, Bradely-Birt said that the Dhakeswari temple was about 200 years old then.

Most of the photos used were either taken by me or my students unless otherwise mentioned. The black and white photograph on Lalbag was taken by Md. Ziaul Hoque; that of Musa Khan Masjid with the anniversary issue was by Kazi Opel; and that of Rashid Bhaban by Sujoy Kumar. These were downloaded from www.flickr.com

A city doesn't start in a day. Unless it is a planned new city like Islamabad, Brasilia or Chandigarh, a city is the accumulated wisdom of centuries of growth. In the west, a city would receive a Charter from the King for to be regarded so, and erect a Cathedral. Dhaka, one of the mega cities of the world was destined to grow once it was selected as a capital. Yet it had a checkered history and dwindling fortunes over the last 400 years of continuous recorded history. One characteristics of Dhaka that distinguish it from other regional cities is that it never waned away, even with its status changed. Dhaka hardly ever lost its importance as a significant seat of administration, culture and trade since the beginning of the seventeenth century except for a brief period when the provincial capital was shifted to Murshidabad in the early eighteenth century, and during the early period of the nineteenth century when it had to cope with the neglect shown by the colonial rulers towards it as downsized from a thriving capital city, reportedly the second largest in the world in that time after London, to a quite sleepy district town.

Subehdar Shahjada Shuja during two decades of his reign mostly stayed in Rajmahal; yet the city prospered and many structures like Eidgah or Bara Katra built then still survive. Shuja also ordered the construction of Churihatta Masjid which was demolished last month. Another over 100 years old historic mosque in Paribaag too has just been demolished without being noticed by conservationists.

I first came to visit the great city of Dhaka in 1969, as a 9-year old from a mufassil town in the north, by train, and disembarked in a station named Fulbaria. This line was part of the oldest rail track in the country. A decade later I would frequently visit the Fulbaria-Gulistan area as a student to buy affordable dresses, and wonder how quick the city was changing. During my first visit, we visited Khilgaon and Tejgaon to meet relatives. Though government establishments were already set in Khilgaon, and the area planned by the C&B, it was still like a village. Standing on the roofs of the Polytechnic Institutes I could see all the three huge water tanks in between Fakirapool and Lalmatia, and the Parliament project that would look like an archaeological site from that distance for its heaps of bricks! Even in 1980 I would wade across muddy paddy fields behind Eskaton, a place whose name was derived from the Scots who used to live there and have a white church built, to meet my father in the Tejgaon Polytechnic.

I would be walking across the encroached upon Hatirjheel without knowing its historic importance. Hatirjheel was part of an elaborate natural waterway system crisscrossing Dhaka from east to west, connecting Balu River with the Turag!

It was part of the Pandu River that flew along the alignment of the Panthapath and Dhanmondi Lake, and contributed in natural storm water sewerage and transportation of goods and people. There were great buildings on this water channel, like the Ambar Shah Masjid and Dhanmondi Eidgah. Dara Bibi's Mazar (with one of the largest dome, now converted to Lalmatia Shahi masjid and Motor Cycle Haat) on a huge pond on its west, one-dome Alla Kuri Masjid (near Mohammedpur Bus Stand, recently demolished), Sattgambudj Masjid in Mohammedpur were also possibly close to the banks of this river. The place where the seven-domed mosque is was variously known as Sarai Jafarabad (a mouza, many of the mouzas were named during the reign of Sher Shah and later Mughal emperors) or Katasur (originally an urban settlement on record).

Elephants used to be kept and trained at the Peelkhana or Filkhana (Elephant Enclave) and often taken parading through the city to Paltan (Cantonment) or Hatirjheel (Elephant Lake) for giving them a bath. The route these would follow is now known as the Hatir Sarak (Elephant Road) that goes across a now extinct bridge crossing the rail line and a small canal at Hatirpool (Elephant Bridge). To its north at Begunbari was a cantonment for sometime; new army barracks were set up during the World War II.

Another such east-west elongated water body was the Segunbagicha Khal-Motijheel-Miran Nala or Jalla or Kamalapur River. This was started to be filled up when Ramna-Paltan-Dilkusha was developed, starting in the late-Nineteenth century as the pleasure gardens of the Nawabs and later to accommodate British government establishments during the short-lived status of the city as the capital of the newly created province of Bengal and Assam. First it was the Bag-e-Padshahi, or Royal Garden, and Bag-e-Musa, during the Mughals. Then Shahbag, Paribag and Dilkusha pleasure gardens of the Nawabs were developed. Later the British took lease of a large part of these lands to develop cantonment (Paltan), ordnance depot (Topkhana), temporary bungalow for the Governor (Dilkusha), and permanent civic, administrative and residential buildings (old High Court Building, Dhaka Medical College, Curzon Hall, Bangla Academy Building, CIRDAP Bhaban, Foreign Ministry Office, Chief Justice's house, Dhaka Club, VC's House, Sugandha Ganabhaban, etc.). Many of these buildings built in Indo-Saracen style had lost their original purpose, and have been variously used over the years since then.

The Governor would stay in the alternate capital of Shilong, a humid hill station up in the Garo Hills, in the hotter months. When in Dhaka he would arrive mainly by steamer to Narayanganj, either from Calcutta or Shillong-Sylhet, and most often by train from there to Fulbaria! He would be shown 'Guard of Honor' in the rail station and then taken by horse-driven carriage to his favored cottage in the present Bangabhavan compound. This original but temporary governor's residence was badly hit later by a tornado in 1961 during Governor Azam Khan, when the current building (President's House) was built there.

Fulbaria has since been replaced by Kamalapur Railway station the terminal building, another architectural marvel with lotus shaped shell structure covering the functional buildings like an umbrella and thus unifying all various spaces beneath it, was designed by Bob Bouigh. Bouigh was among the five American professors of architecture who used to teach at BUET when it opened the program in 1962. He later embraced Islam to marry a local girl, and is now spending vacations in Bangkok. I was told that recently the railway authority has started encasing the buildings with Aluco-Bond. I wonder how and under what circumstances these government departments could take such situations of defacing public buildings with people's money! Another station named Dhakeswari crossing but actually at Nilkhet is no more. Its buildings were variously used by the Dhaka University, like as a press, and next to it was a circular stable of the Nawabs which was demolished in 1984 when some hostels were built.

While the railway laid in 1875, bordering the northern edge of the then-city, was relocated, the older tract was replaced by an avenue through the city in the late-1970s, popularly known as the Asian Highway. In between the abandoned tract housed the largest bastee of the city that got enormous in size during the early-1970s due to socio-political oppression in the rural areas and natural and manmade calamities. Thus this line clinically separates the indigenous city from the so called new Dhaka, starting with the colonial Ramna. This separation is not only geographic or administrative, but also morphological and cognitive. Everything and everybody in the north of the line have aspired for modernity (read western), translated into wide tree-lined avenues in place of narrow cul-de-sacs (dead-end alleys), fast moving vehicular traffic instead of pedestrian movements, glass box skyscrapers instead of walkup courtyard houses.

(Professor of Architecture, North South University)