Lodhi Road

Lodhi Road is a street in New Delhi, India.

The road follows a fourteenth century dirt track connecting Ghiyathpur (now Nizamuddin) village with the Bagh-i Jud (from which we get the present day Jor Bagh), one of the earliest orchards mentioned in Sultanate records. The road then connected to the greater road from Rewari & Gurgaon. Invading armies trooped and camped along it, most famously Timur's troops in 1398.

The road has always been a dividing line between different settlements, times & function. In the fifteenth century, it marked the edge between Kotla Mubarakpur (of the Sayyids) and the necropolis of the Lodhis. In the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries, it marked the edge between the Delhi and Mehrauli tehsils. The masonry bridge over the now dried up rivulet of Jaitpur (the village at the site razed down by the British in 1912) marks Mughal Emperor Akbar's interest in the region. By the late eighteenth century it marked the edge of the then controversial Shia enclave of Alipur, which housed the remains, houses and troops of some estranged Persian nobles of the later Mughal court.

The road marked the edge of the original New Delhi Plan, and still defines the Lutyens Building Zone. Almost all the trees lining New Delhi's avenues can be traced to the Lodhi Road nursery, created just as New Delhi was being planned. The road was much widened in the 1980s in preparation of the Asian Games 1982.

The post independence spurt of institutions along Lodhi Road started with Nehru's gift of some minor bungalow plots to IIC for the new institution. The Ford Foundation, the architectural genius of J.A Stein, the 'brown sahib' bureacrat nexus and blessings of the Government of India allowed the gradual growth of sultanate cum prairie architectural style institutions right up to the Lodhi tombs.

The Metereolgical Department came up opposite the road, but was soon followed by the international development community active in the Delhi of 1960s. UNICEF, WHF, and others soon acquired plots in what was undoubtedly growing into a diplomat-government elite enclave.

Later the Chinmaya trust, World Bank, INTACH and IHC constructed buildings in sympathetic building materials and architectural character. The area was indeed referred to as Steinabad, and Stein remained attached and involved in the buildings till the early 1990s.

Unfortunately and despite all of Stein's visions and 'open' architecture (transparency, shared greens, low boundary walls etc) the area is largely an exclusive, elite preserve in the heart of the city. The Corporate Giants of India have almost sieged this road with high rise buildings except the IHC has been a good exception, in being one of the few true public courts in Delhi after the Jama Masjid.