BOMBAY ART DECO ARCHITECTURE

Bombay Art Deco Architecture presents a treasury of Art Deco buildings comprising residential, commercial and civic architecture. These monuments were created during the mid 30s and 40s, a glamorous and optimistic era that predated the official end of the British Raj. The architects, a small list of first-generation Indian architects and builders, were mostly educated in English schools and trained in western architectural traditionst. Impatient with the British reluctance to shed the Gothic and Indo-Saracenic architectural styles that had dominated Imperial Bombay s urban landscape, these visionaries were determined to imbue the city with a new modern style. That style shares its provenance with the Art Deco architecture of Miami Beach, termed Tropical Deco by author Laura Cerwinske in her seminal 1981 book. Built in the same era, the Art Deco architecture of the two cities exhibits similar scale, geometry, tropical vocabulary, and love of romance.