near the
Thousand Lights Mosque Royapettah, along with the suburbs of
Nungambakkam and
Teynampet, was part of the Great Choultry Plain, as the
British had it in their records back in 1721. Soon after the arrival of the British in the city in the early 17th century, a large Eurasian population started settling in Royapettah and surrounding regions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Muslim settlements started appearing in the neighbourhood from the latter half of the 18th century. In 1798, the
British East India Company constructed the
Amir Mahal to house its administrative offices. When the Company annexed the Carnatic kingdom in 1855 with the
Doctrine of Lapse, the
Chepauk Palace, the official residence of the Nawabs, was auctioned off and purchased by the Madras government. The Nawab moved to a building called Shadi Mahal on Triplicane High Road and lived there. However, the British granted the Amir Mahal to the
Prince of Arcot and the office building was soon converted into a palace by
Robert Chrisholm. In 1876, the Nawab moved in with his family into the Amir Mahal, which has since been the residence of the Nawabs of Arcot. The Purification Church was apparently the first church built in the neighbourhood around 1769. However, this was replaced in 1848 by the Presentation Church, also known as the Wallajahpet Church. This was built on a 21-ground plot granted by the Nawab in 1813. The Subramania Swamy Temple located adjacent to the church was built around 1889 in the area now known as Zam Bazaar. The
Thousand Lights Mosque was built in 1810. In 1819, the first Methodist chapel in India was opened in Royapettah by the Methodist missionary James Lynch who settled down in the neighbourhood a year before. The church grew into the Wesley Church, which was dedicated in 1853. In 1819, the Madras Eye Infirmary (MEI) was founded in the neighbourhood. It remains the oldest specialist eye hospital in Asia and the second oldest in the world. Modelled on
Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, the hospital was moved to
Egmore in 1884 and became the
Government Ophthalmic Hospital in 1886. The
Government Royapettah Hospital was opened in 1911. The first superintendent of the hospital was Col. C. Donovan. In 1858, Monahan Girls' School, one of the oldest Protestant schools, was opened in Royapettah. In 1928, the neighbourhood had one of the earliest school for physical education in the Wesley School. The Royapettah post office appeared in 1834 as a subsidiary of the
General Post Office at
George Town. With the opening of the Woodlands Hotel in 1938 and the Modern Hindu Hotel on General Patter's Road, the neighbourhood became the home to the first Indian-style, vegetarian hotels in the city. In the 1930s, a
clock tower was built in the neighbourhood. Gani and Sons, formerly known as the South India Watch Company, provided the clock instrument for the clock tower. By the middle of the 20th century, Anna Salai had become the hub of automobile manufacturers in
South India, including conglomerates such as
Simson,
Addison Motor Company,
Royal Enfield, South India Automotive Company, George Oaks of the
Amalgamations Group,
Standard Motor Products of India, and
TVS Motor Company. This, coupled with low rental rates in the nearby streets, resulted in automobile spare manufacturers and dealers opening shops in the region, including
Pudupet,
Chintadripet, General Patters Road, Whites Road, State Bank Street and so forth. General Patters Road became the hub of automobile service and spare dealers. This resulted in the region coming to be called
The Detroit of India. == Demographics ==