Victoria Terminus - Bombay

In what was, no doubt, once, the heart of the city is Victoria Teminal: a huge masonry heap with a glass and iron train shed that is so evocative of the British Empire that spawned it, and drips with carvings and grotesques, that it appears to be a charicature of itself. I laughed when I saw it.
F/W.Stevens, the architect, must have had a ball. His designers and draftsmen went to town with any number of monkeys, lizards, cats, dogs, fish and fowl all over the place.

It took 10 years to build and untold numbers of carvers, masons and laborers just to erect the superstructure.
The World Heritage sight calls it "an outstanding example of Victorian Gothic Revival...with themes deriving from traditional Indian architecture" by which I assume he means the peacocks over the windows. There are allegorical figures all over and busts of various personages dotting the facade, none of whom look the slightest bit indigenous.



The carvings can be frightening as cats chase monkeys who carry rats away in their jaws. While crocodiles stalk dogs who snarl; or enchanting as simians coyly peer at you and dogs grin wildly while the elephants watch with wisdom and piety.
The striped stone arches are probably suppose to refeence the great academies of Italy or the arabian architecture, but they add a festive atmosphere. With all the people and the performing animals on the building, it's a regular circus!


Of course not everyone there is moving. There's a lot of standing around and waiting around. There are sleepers everywhere at all times of the day and night. Watched over by the carved mangerie above.

Architecture critics complain that it Penn Station doesn't give a sense of arrival or destination in New York, buried under Madison Square Garden. So there's a lot of government money being wasted on a plan to move it to the Main Post Office across the street. A building not intended as a train terminus. Doesn't matter what they do, it will never compare. Here is a piece of architecture which speaks volumes about the history of the place, and how people thought about it, and what happened there.
For all it's frippery, it serves as architecture should.