Trip Advisor

Timing

24 Hrs

Closing Day

Always Open

Website

NA

Direction

Map

Phone

NA

Toilet

NO

Wheelchair Accessible

NO

Do's/Dont's

NA

Audio Guide

NO

Entrance Fees (Per Person)

India

Adult

0

Child

0

Foreign Nationals

Adult

0

Child

0

Bimstec and Saarc Nationals

Adult

0

Child

0

History

The history of Marine Drive goes back to the 1860s with the idea of building a promenade by reclaiming more land by dredging the sea and dump stones to create land. This plan was abandoned after American Civil War took over soon after the great economic crash that crippled trades at the turn of the 19th Century. The idea was once again taken up as an inspiration after the establishment of Cuffe Parade, a reclamation project that was completed by The Bombay City Improvement Trust. During 1919, when the Backbay reclamation scheme was conceived by the then administrators with an intention to decongest the city after the outbreak of plague, the project took shape with the push of private investors chipping in their money. The plan was to connect Nariman point and Malabar Hill through a promenade.Out of 1500 acres of the original land that was under the plan of reclamation, Marine Drive currently is on a mere 17 acres of land. Rest of the land went under the dispute of wars and defective plans and military possession.There is an inscription on a lamp post at Girgaum Chowpatty that states that the construction of Marine Drive had been initiated there and the place was originally called Kennedy Sea Face. It was named after Sir Michael Kavanagh Kennedy, Secretary of the Bombay Public Works Department and a General in the British Army.The residential buildings around Marine Drive were financed by the who’s who of the city during the 1930s to 1940s. The residents of the area were mostly European and Indian elites. Soona Mahal, the building that is now home to the famous ‘Pizza By The Bay’ restaurant, was one of the posh residential buildings of the time built by a Parsi liquor businessman, Kawasji Fakirji Sidhwa who named his home after his grandmother, Soona Bai Kawasji Sidhwa.Marine Drive has also been home to the Kuwaiti Royal family as they owned the Al-Sabah and Al-Jabreya Court buildings as their holiday homes. Apart from the Parsis, the owners of the majority of the buildings at Marine Drive were the wealthy Hindus who had migrated from Pakistan after the great partition of 1947.There is much history associated with the hotels on Marine Drive too. The Sea Green Hotel used to be a residential apartment for the British Army officials during the Second World War. What used to earlier be an exclusive Europeans-only Bombay Club went on to become the famous ‘The Intercontinental’. Apparently, the old club was taken down and a hotel named ‘Natraj’ was built there, which had an ice-cream parlour (alleged to be Mumbai’s first ice-cream parlour) named Yankee Doodle.

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