Table 3: Survey of major diasporic minority communities in Kolkata

Chapter 3: Architecture of the Diasporic Communities in the City

This chapter contains a survey of the diasporic communities in the city followed by their Architecture of the Armenians and Jews and the most prominent locations they were located in the city.

3.1 Survey of the diasporic communities

A preliminary survey was conducted to gather information of the most important diasporic communities in Kolkata (Refer Table 3). This helped establish the main background of the diasporas. The British who were an important aspect of the city took possession of the city in 1690 and made it the capital of British India up to 1911. This long period of political rule had a profound impact on the architecture of the city, whose influence was expected to be seen in the architecture of the well established minority communities.

Mapping out the buildings and prominent locations of four diasporic communities, Armenians, Jews, Parsis and Chinese in the city, according to data available in Calcutta Mosaic (2009) and the online archive Recalling Jewish Calcutta, it was found that most the significant buildings were located in Central Calcutta (Refer Map 7, Pg 29). It was also observed that the sites housing Jews and Armenians, overlapped in Bara Bazar and Park Street. These two sites are currently commercially important zones in the city. Bara Bazar more of a traditional marketplace and Park Street a more modernised and commercialized zone, both affected by different factors of commercialization due to their precinct.

10

Table 3: Survey of major diasporic minority communities in Kolkata