The LaLiT Great Eastern Kolkata

Old Court House Street, beside Dalhousie Square in the centre of Kolkata, has had a hotel on it since 1840, and The LaLiT Great Eastern Kolkata is that hotel, the oldest in India still receiving guests. For a century it was the Great Eastern Hotel, called the Jewel of the East, where officials of the Raj, planters and visiting writers stayed. After thirty years of decline it was restored by The LaLiT group and reopened in 2013 with 215 rooms.

History

David Wilson, an English confectioner and baker, opened the Auckland Hotel here in 1840, named after Lord Auckland, then Governor-General. It was the first hotel of its kind in the city, with a bakery and a department store beneath the rooms, and it grew block by block along the street. In 1865 it became the Great Eastern Hotel. Rudyard Kipling wrote of it in his sketches of Calcutta, and Mark Twain stayed in 1896 on his lecture tour of India. The hotel is said to have been among the first in Asia to be lit by electricity.

In the twentieth century it received heads of state: Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin in 1955, Queen Elizabeth II in 1961, and Ho Chi Minh. The West Bengal government took it over in 1975 and ran it as a state hotel while the fabric deteriorated. In 2005 the state sold it to Bharat Hotels, the owner of The LaLiT, which closed it for a restoration lasting eight years. It reopened in November 2013 as The LaLiT Great Eastern Kolkata.

Architecture and design

The hotel is three buildings of different ages joined along Old Court House Street. The oldest, Victorian block was restored with its arcades, high ceilings and iron columns, and is graded as a heritage building by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. A twentieth-century block was rebuilt behind the retained facade, and a new tower was added at the back for the bulk of the rooms. The result is a hotel that reads as a Victorian street front from Dalhousie Square and as a contemporary tower from the rear.

Rooms and suites

The 215 rooms and suites are divided between the heritage block, where rooms keep the tall windows and ceiling heights of the nineteenth century, and the new block, where they follow the group's current standard. The suites in the heritage wing are the ones to ask for on a first visit, and the only ones in any luxury hotel in Kolkata that date from before the Mutiny.

Dining

The restaurants and bakery recall David Wilson's trade. Wilson's, the signature restaurant, takes his name, and the bakery continues the tradition that started the house. The hotel's bar and all-day restaurant serve the office district around Dalhousie Square at lunch.

Wellness

Rejuve, the spa, extends over 13,000 square feet with treatment rooms, a gym and a pool.

Weddings and events

The hotel has banqueting halls and conference facilities for weddings, corporate meetings and receptions, and its heritage rooms are used for smaller dinners. Bengali and North Indian weddings are a mainstay, with the restored Victorian block as the backdrop for photographs.

Location

Old Court House Street runs along the east side of Dalhousie Square, now B.B.D. Bagh, the administrative centre of the city with Writers' Building, the General Post Office and Raj Bhavan, the governor's residence, within a few hundred metres. Esplanade metro station and Park Street are a few minutes by car, Howrah Junction is across the Hooghly, and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport lies some 17 kilometres off to the north-east.