![Gol Market, New Delhi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Gol_Market%2C_New_Delhi.jpg)
Gole Market is a
neighborhood
A neighbourhood (British English, Irish English, Australian English and Canadian English) or neighborhood (American English; see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural area, ...
in the heart of
New Delhi
New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
built within a traffic roundabout by
Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memori ...
in 1921. It is one of New Delhi's oldest surviving colonial markets and is considered an architecturally significant structure. The dodecagonal market was built in the axis planned by
Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memori ...
as part of
New Delhi
New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...
's layout.
Peshwa Road, Ramakrishna Ashram Road, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Road, and Bhai Veer Singh Road are four radial roads leading from the market.
History
The octagonal market, designed by Edwin Lutyens, was built in 1921 as an important part of a wider development plan. In the years that followed, the
Connaught Place shopping area was built adjacent to it, catering to the daily needs of thousands of government employees living in nearby residential areas built for them in 1925. These employees worked at the nearby
Secretariat Building, as most government offices had relocated from
Old Delhi
Old Delhi or Purani Dilli is an area in the Central Delhi district of Delhi, India. It was founded as a walled city named Shahjahanabad in 1648, when Shah Jahan (the Mughal emperor at the time) decided to shift the Mughal capital from Agra. Th ...
a decade before the new capital had been inaugurated in 1931. Many of the employees were brought into the new capital from distant parts of India, including the
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...
and
Madras Presidency
The Madras Presidency, or the Presidency of Fort St. George, also known as Madras Province, was an administrative subdivision (presidency) of British India. At its greatest extent, the presidency included most of southern India, including the ...
.
After the
partition of India
The Partition of British India in 1947 was the Partition (politics), change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: ...
, noted painter
B.C. Sanyal
Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal commonly known as B. C. Sanyal (22 April 1901 – 9 August 2003), the doyen of modernism in Indian art, was an Indian painter and sculptor and an art teacher to three generations of artists. During his lifetime he not ju ...
and his wife Snehlata, a
ghazal
The ''ghazal'' ( ar, غَزَل, bn, গজল, Hindi-Urdu: /, fa, غزل, az, qəzəl, tr, gazel, tm, gazal, uz, gʻazal, gu, ગઝલ) is a form of amatory poem or ode, originating in Arabic poetry. A ghazal may be understood as a ...
singer and actress moved to Gole Market. Their "refugee studio" became a hub for artists and students in New Delhi and was later known as Gallery 26. The studio later gave rise to the Delhi Shilpi Chakra, which Sanyal founded with several of her artist friends. This organisation had an important influence on the contemporary art of
North India
North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...
.
By the turn of the 21st century, 28 shops operated in the market, most of them dating back to the 1920s. They included numerous confectioneries, sweet shops, and fast-food restaurants, including Kaleva, Bengali Sweet Shop, Karachi Sweet Shop, and several meat shops. Over the years, the facade deteriorated as a result of unauthorized construction and additions and was in a state of disrepair. The
New Delhi Municipal Council
New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) is the municipal council of the city of New Delhi, Delhi, India. It covers an area of 42.7 km2 under its administration, which is commonly referred as Lutyens' Delhi.
The only owner is Government of In ...
(NDMC) fined several shopkeepers for operating without proper licenses or for unhygienic conditions.
In 2007, the building was declared unsafe and the NDMC offered shopkeepers alternative shops
but they rejected this plan. This forced the NDMC to engage in restoration work. Later, the NDMC proposed granting full heritage status to the building and ending all commercial activities. The traffic police supported the move because running a market in the busy roundabout caused traffic congestion. By May 2009, eviction notices were served to the shopkeepers by the NDMC, which soon had six shops in its possession. The rest of the owners started a campaign against the forced move.
Later, the NDMC revealed new plans to convert the heritage market into a museum. In February 2013, twenty-eight of the market's shopkeepers petitioned against the NDMC's alleged move to take over their shops in the
Delhi High Court
The High Court of Delhi (IAST: ''dillī uchcha nyāyālaya'') was established on 31 October 1966, through the ''Delhi High Court Act, 1966'', with four judges, Chief Justice K. S. Hegde, Justice I. D. Dua, Justice H. R. Khanna and Justice S. ...
. On 20 June 2013, the court ruled in favor of the NDMC but cautioned it against the non-commercial use of the property. The court instructed the shopkeepers to relinquish possession of their stores by 30 June 2013. On 27 June, the Supreme Court upheld the eviction date that had been ordered by the High Court.
Gole Market locality
The New Delhi General
Post Office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...
which was built in 1931 is approximately away from the Gole Market. It is also known as Gole Dak Khana due to the octagonal shape of the building. It was designed by
Robert Tor Russell
Robert Tor Russell (1888–1972) was a British architect. In his position as Chief Architect to the Public Works Department of the Government of India, he is primarily associated with the development of the city of New Delhi in the early 1930s. ...
, the chief architect of the
Public Works Department
This list indicates government departments in various countries dedicated to public works or infrastructure.
See also
* Public works
* Ministry or Board of Public Works, the imperial Chinese ministry overseeing public projects from the Tang ...
(PWD). It stands inside a busy roundabout earlier known as Alexandra Place,
and its height was kept low to allow a clear view of the nearby
Sacred Heart Cathedral.
[
]
Politics
Gole Market is located about away from the commercial center of Connaught Place and away from the President's House and the Parliament House. Located in close proximity to various political buildings, it also houses the Communist Party of India's Delhi headquarters.
The Gole Market area was a Delhi Metropolitan Council constituency within New Delhi
New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...
Lok Sabha
The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-past ...
constituency between 1966–and 1993, and later a Delhi State Assembly constituency within the South Delhi
South Delhi is an administrative district of the National Capital Territory of Delhi in India with its headquarters in Saket. Administratively, the district is divided into three subdivisions, Saket, Hauz Khas, and Mehrauli. It is bounded by t ...
Lok Sabha constituency from 1993 to 2008. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit
Sheila Dikshit () (née Kapoor; 31 March 1938 – 20 July 2019) was an Indian politician. The longest-serving Chief Minister of Delhi, as well as the longest-serving female chief minister of any Indian state, she served for a period of 15 ye ...
contested and won the Gole Market seat in the 1998 and 2003 assembly elections. However, after the delimitation exercise in 2008, the seat ceased to exist and is now the New Delhi constituency.
Education
The area around Gole Market is home to a number of schools including NP Boys Senior Secondary School, Harcourt butler senior secondary school, St. Columbas School, Convent of Jesus and Mary, N P Bengali Girls Senior Secondary School, Elisabeth Hall-Shiv Niketan School, Kali Bari Dayanand Model Public School, Ranoor Paathshaala, Raisina Bengali School, Kaali Bari, NP Primary School, Kendriya Vidyalaya
The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan () is a system of central government schools in India that are instituted under the aegis of the Ministry of Education, Government of India. , it has a total of 1,248 schools in India, and three abroad in Moscow ...
Gole Market, and D.T.E.A Senior Secondary School.
Religious buildings
Churches:
* Sacred Heart Cathedral (Delhi, India), within the compound of Archbishop's House
IPC Northern Region
St. Peter's Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Cathedral
*Church of North India
The Church of North India (CNI) is the dominant united Protestant church in northern India. It was established on 29 November 1970 by bringing together the Protestant churches working in northern India. It is a province of the worldwide Anglica ...
Delhi Bible Fellowship
* The Marthoma Church
Temples:
*Laxminarayan Temple
The Laxminarayan Mandir, also known as the '' Birla Mandir'', is a Hindu temple up to large extent dedicated to Laxminarayan in Delhi, India. Laxminarayan usually refers to Vishnu, Preserver in the Trimurti, also known as Narayan, when he i ...
(Birla Mandir)
* Kali Bari Mandir on Mandir Marg
*Hanuman Temple, Connaught Place
Hanuman Temple in Connaught Place, New Delhi, India, is an ancient Hindu temple and is claimed to be one of the five temples of Mahabharata days in Delhi. The other four temples are the Kalkaji, a Kali temple in South Delhi containing Swayambu ...
Arya Samaj Mandir
Mandir marg)
Gurdwaras:
*Gurudwara Bangla Sahib
Gurudwara Bangla Sahib () is one of the most prominent Sikh gurdwaras, or Sikh house of worship, in Delhi, India, and known for its association with the eighth Sikh Guru, Guru Har Krishan, as well as the holy pond inside its complex, known as t ...
Mosques :
*Kalali Bagh Masjid, Ramakrishna Ashram Marg
References
{{Neighborhoods of Delhi
Neighbourhoods in Delhi