Kurla gets its name from the
East Indian village of Kurla, whose name, in turn, originated from "Kurli", the local name for crab, as these were found in plenty in the marshes in the vicinity of the village. The village of Kurla came under Portuguese rule when the
Treaty of Bassein (1534) was signed by
Sultan Bahadur of Gujarat and the
Kingdom of Portugal on 23 December 1534. In 1548, the village of Kurla and six other villages were given by the Governor of
Portuguese India to
Antonio Pessoa as a reward for his military services. Kurla remained under Portuguese rule until the British occupied
Salsette Island in 1774. The island was formally ceded to the East India Company in the 1782
Treaty of Salbai. In 1805, Kurla was connected to
Sion on Bombay Island by the
Sion Causeway. Coorla, as it was spelt during the
British Raj until 1890, was a major station on the
Great Indian Peninsula Railway between Bombay and Thane, the first railway line in
British India, when it opened in 1853. In 1808, Kurla, along with the villages of Mohili,
Kolekalyan,
Marol,
Sahar,
Asalphe, and Parjapur, were given by the British to a
Parsi merchant of Bombay, Mr. Hormasji Bamanji Wadia in exchange for a piece of land near the Apollo pier gate in Bombay. His Son, Mr. Ardeshir Hormasji Wadia, after whom the A. H. Wadia Road was named, paid for them a yearly
Quit-rent of £358 (Rs. 3587). Kurla had two
cotton mills, one of them, the Dharamsi Punjabhai, being the largest cotton spinning and weaving mill in the
Bombay Presidency, with 92,094 spindles and 1280 looms. The other was the Kurla Spinning and Weaving Mill. Kurla village had a population of 9,715 at that time. About half of them worked in the mills, while the rest were fishermen,
husbandmen (farmers), and salt-makers. The
Holy Cross Church at Kurla, built during the Portuguese rule and rebuilt in 1848, is one of the oldest churches in Mumbai. The Mithibai Hormasji Wadia Dispensary was built by Mr. Bamanji Hormasji Wadia in 1855, and endowed by him with £1200 (Rs. 12,000). It was in charge of an assistant surgeon, and, in 1880–81, had an attendance of 7367 out-patients. The salt pans covered an area of about and yielded a yearly revenue of £3418 (Rs. 34,180). There was also a considerable manufacture of shell lime. The Stone quarries of Kurla were well known and supplied material for the construction of most of the
city's famous heritage buildings like the
Prince of Wales Museum, and the
General Post Office among others. The beginning of the twentieth century saw Kurla develop as an important centre of the mill industry. In 1910, there were reported to be several mills in Kurla, engaged in the manufacturing of cotton cloth and woollen cloth in steam factories. Kurla, however, was an old textile industrial core, an outlier to the main cotton mill zone. A relatively cheaper land value and nearness to water and power mains enabled rapid industrial expansion of the suburbs and the Kurla-
Ghatkopar–
Vikhroli–
Bhandup belt soon developed into the largest industrial zone in the suburbs of Mumbai. The Central Railway began its Harbour Line services from Kurla to
Reay Road station on 12 December 1910. This service was extended to
Victoria Terminus in 1925. The Kurla Railway Car-shed was constructed in 1925 when electrification of the
Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR) Harbour line was undertaken. The first electric train in Asia that ran between CST and Kurla on 3 February 1925 was maintained at this car shed. The
Salsette–Trombay Railway, also known as the Central Salsette Tramway, opened in 1928. The 13-kilometre line, a project of the
Bombay Improvement Trust, run by the GIPR, ran from Trombay to Andheri via Kurla and lasted only a few years.
Premier Automobiles Limited built their first automobile assembly plant in Kurla in 1946 and began production in March 1947, collaborating with American automobile manufacturer
Chrysler to manufacture
Dodge,
Plymouth, and
Desoto models in India. The iconic
Premier Padmini car was also built at Kurla from 1964 until the plant closed down in 1997. This resulted in the development of the old Kurla neighbourhood into an automobile industrial zone during the late fifties and sixties. The Bombay Taximen Union began building the Taximens Colony close to the Mithi river, in Kurla in 1969. It was inaugurated by union leader
George Fernandes in 1972. The Bombay Taximens Cooperative housing society is Mumbai's second largest
housing society. The Dairy Development Department of the State Government, in order to cope-up with the increasing demand for milk, established a dairy at Nehru nagar, Kurla (East) in 1975. == Geography ==