In 1717, the
East India Company obtained the right to rent from 38 villages surrounding their settlement from the
Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar. Of these, 5 lay across the
Hooghly in what is now Howrah district. The remaining 33 villages were on the Calcutta side. After the fall of
Siraj-ud-daulah, the last independent
Nawab of Bengal, it purchased these villages in 1758 from
Mir Jafar, and reorganised them. These villages were known en-bloc as
Dihi Panchannagram and Bhowanipore was one of them. It was considered to be a suburb beyond the limits of the
Maratha Ditch. Bhowanipore existed as a
dihi in 1765 and also absorbed a part of Dihi Chakraberia. The construction of Harish Mukherjee Road and Lansdowne Road (now Sarat Bose Road) and the extension of Hazra Road to Kalighat, opened up the area at the beginning of the 20th century. Artisans played a role in developing the neighbourhood and making it a populous native place. The
kansaris (braziers), the
shankharis (conch workers) and the
telis (oil pressers); all had their
paras. The goods were sold in
pattis. Along with these artisans, Indian lawyers flocked to Bhowanipore, as the
Sadr Diwani Adalat, the highest appellate court in those days, had shifted to the old Military Hospital Building here, and the District Judge's court was in
Alipore. In 1888, one of the 25 newly organized police section houses was located in Bhowanipore. In the first half of the 20th century, “in the milieu of relative urban prosperity... Calcutta’s rich citizens – those connected with jute, coal, tea, other industries, trade, money-lending and rentier income from urban property – did fabulously well for themselves.” Many of the mansions in
Ballygunge, Bhowanipore and
Alipore were built by the city's Bengali and the new Marwari elite who wanted to move from the “dirtier sections of north Calcutta to the more fashionable areas in the south”. Again, it was in the first half of the 20th century that with the implementation of the Area Improvement Programme of Calcutta Improvement Trust Bhowanipore, an old residential suburb was upgraded to modern standards of town planning. ==Notable residents==