Old Photo of Great Eastern Hotel

 

The British brought modern hotels to Kolkata. The Oldest was John Spence's Hotel. Spence's, the first ever hotel in Asia was opened to the public in 1830. The Great Eastern Hotel was established in 1840 or 1841 by David Wilson as the Auckland Hotel, named after George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, then Governor General of India. Prior to opening the hotel, Wilson ran a bakery at the same site. The hotel opened with 100 rooms and a department store on the ground floor (Spence's Hotel, established in 1830 but no longer in existence, is considered to be the first major hotel in Calcutta). The Auckland was expanded in the 1860s and its managing company renamed from D. Wilson and Co. to Great Eastern Hotel Wine and General Purveying Co. It was also amongst the first to have an Indian on its board of directors, in 1859. It became the Great Eastern Hotel in 1915. In 1883 the premises of the hotel were electrified, thus probably becoming the first hotel in India, to be illuminated by electricity. During its heyday, the hotel was known variously as the "Jewel of the East" and the "Savoy of the East" and was prosaically described by Kipling in his short story City of Dreadful Night. It was said of the hotel in 1883 that "a man could walk in at one end, buy a complete outfit, a wedding present, or seeds for the garden, have an excellent meal, a burra peg (double) and if the barmaid was agreeable, walk out at the other end engaged to be married". The hotel has housed many famous personalities including Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin, Elizabeth II, Mark Twain  Dave Brubeck, and possibly Ho Chi Minh.Until its closure for restoration in 2005, the hotel was the longest continuously operating hotel in Asia.