Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Built in Mumbai From 1878 to a Design by F. W. Stevens, Joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004, and 94 Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Buildings Followed in 2018

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the station and Central Railway headquarters in south Mumbai, in Maharashtra, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 7 July 2004. A second Mumbai listing followed on 30 June 2018, the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai: 94 historic buildings and an open ground, the Oval Maidan, between them. In April 2026 Central Railway’s chief public relations officer said that more than 1.2 million passengers pass through the terminus every day, on suburban and long-distance trains.

Four names have been attached to the building. According to the nomination file it was renamed in the 1990s after Shivaji, and UNESCO’s inscription papers use Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, with Victoria Terminus in brackets. An IANS report carried by Business Standard on 8 May 2017 says the word Maharaj was added that year, “in honour of the great Maratha warrior king” whom tuput profiles in Shivaji Maharaj. That report counts it as the fourth name, after Bori Bunder, Victoria Terminus and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

A shed at Bori Bunder, then a headquarters

The railway that grew into India’s network began at this site. A train left Bori Bunder for Thana (now Thane) on 16 April 1853, covering 21 miles, according to the nomination file India sent UNESCO in January 2003. At that time the station was a small shed. Where the new terminus stands, the file adds, there was a temple of Mumbadevi, the goddess from whom Mumbai takes its name, and the temple was shifted to its present place.

F. W. Stevens, a British architect who lived from 1848 to 1900, drew the first plans in June 1876, the file says, quoting the historian Christopher London. In 1877 the government lent him to the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, and in 1878 he spent ten months in Europe studying the newest railway termini before he returned with a full set of plans. Construction began in 1878 and ran for ten years. A historical account quoted in the file puts the cost at Rs 16,35,562 for the offices and Rs 10,40,248 for the station.

Records give more than one end date. UNESCO’s summary says the terminus took ten years from 1878. Elsewhere the same file says it was completed in 1887, quotes an older account that gives 1888, and says part of it opened to traffic on 1 January 1882. It also says the building was formally opened on Jubilee Day in 1887, for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. A station for main-line trains was added next to it in 1929.

What UNESCO and ICOMOS wrote in 2004

Two criteria carried the 2004 inscription. Under criterion (ii) the World Heritage Committee found “an important interchange of influences from Victorian Italianate Gothic Revival architecture, and from Indian traditional buildings.” Under criterion (iv) it called the terminus “an outstanding example of late 19th century railway architecture in the British Commonwealth,” with advanced structural and technical solutions. India’s file had argued under all six cultural criteria. ICOMOS, the Committee’s expert adviser on cultural sites, recommended two.

In 1998 ICOMOS first reviewed the terminus and asked for a proper conservation programme and a comparison with railway termini worldwide. It sent expert missions in 1999 and September 2003, and in March 2004 recommended inscription. Its report says G. G. Scott’s St Pancras station in London is the closest reference for the design, but that Victoria Terminus has its own character, marked by a masonry dome and detailing in coloured stone, tile, marble and stained glass. When it was completed, ICOMOS says, it was considered the grandest Gothic Revival building in the British Commonwealth.

Octagonal and ribbed, the dome has dovetailed ribs, the file says, and they were built without centering, the temporary timber frame that normally holds an arch or dome while it is built. On top stands a figure of Progress 16 feet 6 inches (about 5 metres) tall, holding a torch in her right hand and a spoked wheel in her left.

The carvers and the stone

The file reproduces a description from The Builder of 23 October 1886 that credits the decoration and carving to Indian workmen under European supervision. Students of the Bombay School of Art, under its superintendent John Griffiths, made the models for the foliage, drawn from local flowers, plants and animals, and the school’s metal department supplied the ironwork. General contractors were Burjorjes Rustomjee, Maistry and Co., and Siteram Khanderao and Mahderao Janardhan of the Public Works Department served as assistant engineer and supervisor, in the file’s spelling. Lockwood Kipling, the file adds, trained many of the Indian sculptors involved.

Indian sandstone and limestone form the main structure, ICOMOS lists, with Italian marble for key decoration. Per the nomination file the sculpture is in Porbunder limestone, including the lion for Britain and the tiger for India that top the gate columns. ICOMOS noted in 2004 that the old booking hall, the Star Chamber, was still the booking office.

How many people use it

Six trains ran when the station was conceived, the 2003 file says, and about 1,050 now ran through it, carrying “about 3 to 3.5 million people daily.” ICOMOS’s 2004 report counted six suburban and ten out-station tracks, up from four. On 20 September 2022 the Free Press Journal reported almost 1,000 trains a day and daily footfall of around 5 lakh. Central Railway’s chief public relations officer put it at more than 1.2 million in April 2026. None of the three says how the count was made.

In August 2018 PTI reported a Rs 51 crore restoration of the building, chosen as one of ten places for upgrading under the Swachh Bharat Mission. SBI Foundation had committed Rs 10 crore, INTACH was the consultant and stone carvers were working on it, Central Railway’s chief spokesperson said.

A redevelopment of the station area has since been tendered. Mumbai’s heritage committee approved it, the Free Press Journal reported on 14 March 2022. Business Standard reported on 12 April 2023 that Ahluwalia Contracts was the lowest bidder at Rs 2,450 crore, against a Centre estimate that the paper reported as around Rs 1,800 crore. A regulatory filing, reported by the Free Press Journal on 29 April 2023, showed the Rail Land Development Authority had awarded the contract. Under the plan, Business Standard says, arrival and departure terminals are separated, railway offices move away from the heritage area, and the station is linked to Metro line 3, part of the network described in India’s metro systems. The Union railways minister has said the work was planned not to interfere with the heritage building.

Two listings, one park between them

A different set of buildings makes up the 2018 listing. Mumbai’s other World Heritage Site, the Elephanta Caves in the harbour, has its own article. UNESCO’s Committee, meeting in Manama on 30 June 2018, inscribed it under criteria (ii) and (iv) and renamed it the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai, a change India accepted. By ICOMOS’s measure the property is 66.34 hectares, with a buffer zone of 378.78 hectares: 94 historic buildings and the Oval Maidan. Victorian Gothic public buildings stand on the east side of the Oval, Art Deco buildings on the west, and the Art Deco row extends along Marine Drive.

The terminus is a separate World Heritage Site and not one of the 94. The Fort Precinct, ICOMOS says, takes in the terminus and Crawford Market at its northern edge, and serves as the buffer zone for both World Heritage Sites.

Dates differ for the Victorian group. The Committee’s text says the 1880s, ICOMOS’s history places the buildings along the eastern edge of the Oval in the 1870s, and the Press Information Bureau’s list runs from the Old Secretariat (1857 to 1874) and the Bombay High Court (1878) to Elphinstone College (1888). They are built of Deccan basalt, ICOMOS says, with carvings in Porbunder limestone. They have Gothic turrets, spires, pointed arches and gargoyles, together with Indian sloping tiled roofs, carved balconies and verandas. The Committee calls the Rajabai Clock Tower the “visual high point” of the ensemble.

Reinforced concrete on reclaimed land

The Art Deco side belongs to the Backbay Reclamation, land won from the sea in the early twentieth century. ICOMOS says the block facing the Oval and Churchgate went up in the early 1930s and became the first Art Deco buildings in India, with the Marine Drive row following in the 1940s. They were built in reinforced concrete, the leases required 20 feet of clear space around each building, and most of the buildings have five or six storeys. ICOMOS gives the reclaimed area as 553 acres in one passage and 552 in another. The Art Deco Mumbai Trust’s authors give 439.6 acres as the part made available for building.

The Committee says the Art Deco cinemas and apartment blocks blended Indian design with Art Deco imagery in a style that became known as Indo-Deco. Among the cinemas, ICOMOS names the Regal and the Eros. The Trust’s authors say the Regal, built in 1933, was the work of Charles Stevens, son of the terminus’s architect, and was the city’s first Art Deco building. They also note a shift in building names in the precinct, from colonial ones such as Empress Court to names such as Bharatiya Bhavan, meaning Indian house.

A nomination written by citizens

The same authors say the dossier, which ran to more than 1,500 pages, was prepared by citizens, resident associations, architects, conservationists and planners, led by Abha Narain Lambah Associates, and that no World Heritage nomination before it had been initiated by stakeholders. Local groups such as the Oval Trust and the Marine Drive Residents’ Association took part in protecting the buildings and preparing the dossier, and ICOMOS welcomed that. Mumbai’s Heritage Regulations of 1995, it adds, made the city the first in India with a legal framework to protect its urban heritage.

ICOMOS recommended inscription in March 2018. Extra information India sent on 13 February 2018, it wrote, “offers a convincing rationale” for treating the two groups as one ensemble; its earlier report had found the narrative lacking coherence. The Minister of State for Culture (Independent Charge) said in the Press Information Bureau’s release of 30 June 2018 that the listing would boost tourism and employment.

What the Committee asked for next

The Committee’s decision makes six recommendations. They are a building-by-building record to complete the 2013 inventory, protection of the wider setting and of the Rajabai Clock Tower’s place on the skyline, urgent conservation of the former Watson’s Hotel (Esplanade Mansions), revival of the Eros Cinema, which no longer works as a cinema, backing for the Heritage Conservation Committee’s decisions with documentation, and a fuller site management plan. ICOMOS records that the Bombay High Court, the University Library, the Rajabai Clock Tower and the Convocation Hall had already been restored, and that work on the Public Works Department building was continuing.