Kolkata, India is currently the third-most populous city in India after Delhi and Mumbai.

During the British colonial era from 1700 to 1912, when Kolkata (then known as Calcutta) was the capital of British India, Kolkata witnessed a spate of frenzied construction activity of buildings largely influenced by the conscious intermingling of Neo-Gothic, Baroque, Neo-Classical, Oriental and Islamic schools of design.

Unlike many north Indian cities, whose construction stresses minimalism, the layout of much of the architectural variety in Kolkata owes its origins to European styles and tastes imported by the British and, to a much lesser extent, the Portuguese and French.

Some of the major buildings of this period are well maintained and several buildings have been declared as heritage structures.

Conservation efforts are patchy and are often affected by problems of litigation, tenant troubles, ownership disputes, old tenancy laws and a lack of funds.

The Great Eastern Hotel (officially Lalit Great Eastern Hotel) was founded as the Auckland Hotel in 1841, at the crossroads of the Old Courthouse Street and British India Street, founded by confectioner David Wilson and named after the then Governor General Lord Auckland.

It grew from strength to strength over the 19th and first half of the 20th century.

Locally known as "Wilson's Hotel", it was also known as "Auckland Hotel and the "Hall of Nations" in the 19th century, and was referred to as the "Japani Hotel" (Japanese Hotel) colloquially in the 20th century, due to the large number of Japanese tourists there.

The hotel was extremely elite, referred to as the "Jewel of the East" and "the best hotel East of the Suez" by Mark Twain on his voyage along the Equator, and described by Rudyard Kipling in "The City of Dreadful Night".

It had notable board members like the author Parry Chand Mitter and stockholders like W. Bonnerjee - president of the Indian National Congress.

The hotel was famous for its new year parties thrown by Maharajahs (like the Maharajah of Cooch Behar) until the 1950s.

It has been host to such notables as Elizabeth II on her India visit, Nikita Khrushchev's delegation in the 1950s, and visiting international cricket teams.

The hotel kitchens, manned by the legendary Baruahs of Chittagong (now in Bangladesh), was the talk of Kolkata.

It steadily progressed downhill since the 1970s, and was taken over by the Government of West Bengal in 1975 on grounds of insolvency.

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