Annie Monk  started one Boarding House and ultimately expanded to include ten in the city of Calcutta and probably the largest no of single owned establishments in the country. There were many Boarding Houses which existed at the time but hers were distinguished by the style, scale and personal touch.

Mrs Annie Monk founded the “Grand Hotel” in 1894, on 16 & 17 Chowringhee Road where a theatre and one of her 5 boarding house existed earlier. Later when Mrs Monk retuned from Europe with ill health in 1909, she sold the Grand Hotel along with the remaining 3 Boarding Houses on 12, 13, 14 & 15 Chowringhee Rd to Mr Stephen Arathoon, who after Mrs Monk’s death in 1910, closed all boarding houses and enlarged the Grand Hotel combining the entire land on 12 to 17 Chowringhee Road.

Built in an extravagant neoclassical style, the hotel soon became a popular spot amongst the English population of Calcutta. It was known, in particular, for its annual New Year party that, along with iced champagne and expensive gifts, involved the release of twelve piglets in the ballroom. Anyone who caught a piglet, could keep it.

In the 1930s, sometime after the death of Stephen, a typhoid epidemic in Calcutta resulted in the death of six people at the hotel. The drainage system at the hotel was suspected and it was closed in 1937. The property was leased by Mohan Singh Oberoi who reopened the hotel in 1939 and was able to buy the property outright in 1943.

The hotel got a major lift during World War II when about 4000 soldiers were billeted there, and would party regularly. Events like the U.S. Marines’ Ball at the hotel remind visitors of such times.

The grandeur exists even today, the magnificent chandelier at the entrance and the large spacious rooms reminiscent of the good old days.

Trivia

Of the 5 houses that formed the nucleus of the Grand Hotel,  part of it was run as a hotel by Jack Andrews owner of Spence’s Hotel, later acquired by Mrs. Monk .