Metcalfe Hall, Strand Road, Calcutta, 1851

মেটকাফ হল, স্ট্র্যান্ড রোড, কলকাতা, ১৮৫১
Metcalfe Hall is erected on the plot where the old Sailors Home had stood in dilapidated condition at the junction of Strand Road and Hare Street. The Hall was completed in 1844 according to the design prepared by the city magistrate, C.K. Robinson, and named after Sir Charles T. Metcalfe, the Governor-General of India, in honour of his efforts towards a free press. The building faces the Hooghly river on the West. The notable Greek order of the architecture was taken from the Tower of the Winds in Athens, one of the time tested designs of durability and lightness. The building is raised on a solid basement and thirty huge Corinthian pillars support a massive entablature. The columns and colonnade surround the whole building. The main entrance from the West comprising a giant flight of stairs has been closed later, and provide access through the portico on the East.

Initially, the building housed the Agricultural and Horticultural Society and the Calcutta Public Library. The Library collection, formed by Lord Metcalfe, then the Governor General, who transferred 4,675 volumes from the library of the College of Fort William. These volumes and donations of books from individuals formed the nucleus of the library, which was created under private auspices. Dwarkanath Tagore was the first proprietor of Calcutta Public Library, and Peary Chand Mitra its first librarian. In 1867 the Bengal Social Science Association was established in this building.
Whole-plate albumen print from wet collodion glass negative of a photograph taken by Francis Frith in 1850s.