Harking back: Story of Lahore’s most beautiful boulevard

In our school and college days we used to walk every evening from our house on Rattigan Road to Charing Cross on The Mall and back. It was a routine walk for one met friends galore. My father described it as “one of the sub-continent’s most beautiful”.

The story of The Mall is a mere 165 years old, and came about after the events of 1857. So in this piece let us explore its history, and, naturally, we will first consider the beginning. So let us start from Lower Mall, where a few structures stood before the British came. To the south of the Walled City stood the Civil Secretariat, built by the French as a residence of the Sikh’s Fauj-e-Khas commander General Jean Battiste Ventura, a French-Italian soldier of Napoleon.

But before the first main building came up, it was a garden in which the tomb of the beautiful Anarkali was built. Allegedly she was buried alive for having an eye on Prince Shah Jehan, even though she was part of the harem of his father Emperor Akbar. So Ventura got this first house built in Anarkali’s garden, and slowly around this house an entire administrative structure came up.

Near the Walled City was the Horse Coach building of the Sikhs, from where carriages left for and returned from Amritsar. It was built on a mound, and once the British came it became part of the Government College Lahore, being used as the college gymnasium. So between these two main buildings to the east was Anarkali Bazaar. In between was the ‘baradari’ of Wazir Khan in the Old Anarkali garden.

The events of 1857 saw East India Company sepoys revolting and attacking Company soldiers and employees. Those arrested were blow up by cannon in the empty space outside the bazaar, which housed the first cantonment of Lahore. It is a massacre never reported, intense that it was. Old Anarkali as we now call it was the first British cantonment of Lahore. Later as the East India Company settled down the Tollinton Market, originally called the Great Exhibition Hall, came up at this place. At this point the British realised that expanding a cantonment in the middle of a busy bazaar was ‘dangerous’. So a famous incident took place.

The first administrators of Lahore after its capture in 1849 were three persons, they being brothers Henry and John Lawrence and a top British bureaucrat Charles Mansel. One day as the three were out on a morning ride, they met the Commander-in-Chief of British India, Sir Charles Napier, on his horse. Before they could exchange greeting Napier called out: “I know you want to discuss where the new Lahore Cantonment will be.” So they followed Napier as he galloped eastwards about five miles. In the middle of a field they stopped and he announced: “This is where the new cantonment will be.”

That spot today is where the roundabout now having the first church of the cantonment, as well a few bakery stores and a bank exist. It is where today Abid Majeed Road and Tufail Road cross. These roads were originally named Wellington Road and Featherstone Road and is known as Upper Mall.

But let us start from Lower Mall and see how the British built Mall Road in Lahore. The original The Mall is the pride of England for it joins Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square.

The British priority for The Mall was to build educational institutions, public health centres and centres of judicial justice. So their priority was education, health and justice. Makes senses if they were thinking long-term. To the south of Lower Mall came up the Lahore Sessions Court, Town Hall, the Mayo School of Arts (now National College of Arts), the Lahore Museum, the Punjab Public Library and the Tollinton Market, originally called the Great Exhibition Hall. In between is an array of government departments, all beautiful buildings.

To the north was built the Lahore District Courts, the Government College Lahore, the Central Model School, the Oriental College and the Punjab University. All these neo-Gothic, baroque and neoclassical structures spoke volumes of the effort put in. They did for Lahore which no ruler before or afterwards has managed. Within a short time period The Mall west of Anarkali Bazaar, which stretches from the Civil Secretariat to Lohari Gate of the Walled City, came about as second to none in the British Empire.

Here we will pause to analyse the structures as representing European influenced. With time as The Mall stretched eastwards, we see the structures acquire an oriental touch. As local architects and builders came forth, they mixed gothic and oriental building influences to come up with a beautiful set of structures. The mix is exquisite.

Slightly to the east of this place came up the Postmaster General’s office, the Lahore High Court (then called the Chief’s Court) and the Telegraph office, and in between the YMCA and other new buildings. In a way this area alone saw the emergence of ‘Lahore the Beautiful’ of the British era. Even today it is a unique set of architecture and represents the best of oriental and western amalgamated design.

Then followed the emergence of the buildings sponsored by local business houses. At the high court corner we have the Cathedral School and its church, and behind it nearby is the Sacred Heart School, while a small distance ahead on the southern side you have the St. Anthony’s school and its beautiful church. In these schools the elite were educated.

Ahead is where they built Charing Cross, named after a similar place in London at the end of The Mall there. In London six roads lead out, but in Lahore five, or let’s say ‘six’ if both directions of The Mall are considered. Here a beautiful Mughal-style structure was erected and a magnificent statue of Queen Victoria was put in place. ‘Malika da Buth’ old folk still call the place.

Come Pakistan and it was removed and now lies in a basement of the Lahore Museum. Gen Ziaul Haq replaced with a wooden structured replica of the Holy Quran, which no longer is there. Opposite the Victoria statue of Charing Cross, the Freemason’s Hall came up and behind it the Lahore Zoo and Lawrence Gardens, in which two beautiful buildings, the Lawrence Hall and the Montgomery Hall, which housed the first Lahore Gymkhana came up. Originally, this club was founded by officers near the shrine of Ali Hajveri. Opposite the Civil Secretariat is the Roberts Club, where the first snooker tables were put in place. This is where the ‘Thug Campaign’ was planned.

Beyond this is the Governor House, originally a Mughal era tomb of a saint and later the resident of a Sikh general. Beyond this the British built the huge Aitchison College for the landed elite of Punjab, and opposite this came about a massive residential area for senior government officers, call the GOR, or Government Officers Residences.

So The Mall moves on to the new Mian Mir Cantonment. But just what did The Mall represent? The initial buildings reflected the finest of the British Raj, which no doubt incorporated oriental influences. As we move eastwards the oriental touch can be increasingly seen, some exquisite. It is the finest boulevard in the land now called Pakistan.

The newer developments of Gulberg and the huge Defence Society do have their boulevards, but not a patch on The Mall. The nearest is the Sir Ganga Ram designed Model Town, for it has managed to retain its greenery. But still just as ‘Lahore is Lahore’, so is ‘The Mall is The Mall’.